foundation.' 

^e 


Issell    Hunt 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


ANGELES 


iNnovNOHin 


UNION   FOUNDATIONS-- 


A.     STUDY 


A    FACT     OF     SCIENCE. 


CAPT.  E.  B.  HUNT, 


CORPS     OP     ENGINEERS,     UNITED     8TATK8    AKMT. 


NEW    YORK: 
D.   VAN    NOSTRAND,    192    BROADWAY, 

LONDON:  TRUBNEE  &  CO. 
1863. 


UNION   FOUNDATIONS-- 


STUDY 


AMERICAN    NATIONALITY 


A    FACT    OF    SCIENCE. 


BY 


CAPT.  E.  B.  HUNT, 

CORPS    OF    ENGINEERS,     UNITED    STATES    AF.MT. 


NEW    YOKE  : 
D.   VAN    NOSTRAND,    192    BROADWAY. 

LONDON:  TRVBNER  &  CO. 
1863. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1SC3,  by 
D.    VAN    NOSTBAND, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  Southern  District. 
of  New  York. 


KLECTKOTTPED   BY 

SMITH   <k   McDotrOAt, 

82  &  84  Beekman-st. 


/?  ? 


NOTE. 

As  the  following  discussion  of  the  scientific  bases  on  which  our 
nationality  has  rested  and  must  rest,  was  written  in  September, 
1862,  the  partial  coincidence  of  certain  views  herein  set  forth 
with  those  embodied  in  a  portion  of  the  President's  Message  of 
December,  1862,  must  be  regarded  as  a  natural  agreement,  and  as 
an  .evidence  that  these  views  are  truthful  and  necessary  results  of 
candid  study. 

The  Editor's  Table  of  Harper's  Magazine,  for  February,  1863, 
contains  a  condensed  re-casting,  by  an  able  hand,  of  many  facts  and 
views  presented  in  this  study,  and  I  can  but  hope  that  the  popular 
audience  thus  reached,  as  well  as  the  readers  of  the  following 
pages,  may  find  therein,  not  only  food  for  reflection,  but  new 
courage,  and  new  hope,  amid  the  gloom  and  distraction  of  a 
trying  hour.  E.  B.  H. 

NEW  HAVEN,  CONN.,  Jan.  20,  1863. 


554571 


ABSTRACT    OF    CONTENTS. 


•  PAGE 

Science  interprets  God's  Designs  concerning  Man  and  Nations 7 

Natural  Development  in  Human  History 9 

Nations  are  Organisms. — Growth  in  Complexity. — Specialization. — Cir- 
culation.— Nervous  Structure  and  Cerebration. — Definiteness  and  Pro- 
tective Boundaries 10-19 

Secession  and  its  Demands. 19-21 

No  natural  dividing  Boundary 21 

Data  of  Physical  Geography 22 

General  Structure  of  the  North  American  Continent. — The  Continental 
Plain. — Atlantic  Slope. — Appalachian  Mountain  System. — Valley  of 
the  Lakes. — The  Mississippi  Basin. — "West- American  Mountain  and 
Valley  System 23-34 

North  and  South  structural  Bonds. — Coastwise  Trade  and  Travel — Mis- 
sissippi River  System 34-37 

East  and  West  Union  Bonds. — Lakes,  Canals,  Rivers,  and  Railroads. — 
Grain  Movement. — Intercommunication. — Coal  Mines. — "Water-power. 
— Union  of  great  Interests 37-42 

Our  Future  Military  Establishments 42 

Capacity  of  United  States  to  support  Population. — Actual  Population 
Movements. — Prospective  Increase 43-47 

The  problem  of  Races. — The  Negro  tropical. — "White  men  will  want  all 
Temperate  Lands. — The  Amazon  Valley  providentially  destined  for  a 
Negro  Empire. — Southern  Land  Problem. — Gospel  of  Slavery. — Free 
"White  Labor,  the  destined  Conqueror 47-57 

Passions  derange  Natural  Economies.  —  Perversion  of  our  Official 
Tenures 57-59 

Three  possible  Endings  of  our  Contest,  agreeing  in  a  Restored  Union.. 59-61 


"I  am  compelled  to  ascribe  the  frame  of  this  system  to  an  intelligent 
Agent." — NEWTON.  Second  Letter  to  Dr.  Bentley- 

"  For  it  became  Him  who  created  them  to  set  them  in  order." — NEWTON. 
Optics,  3lst  Query. 

"  If  the  laws  of  Nature,  on  the  one  hand,  are  invincible  opponents ;  on  the 
other,  they  are  irresistible  auxiliaries." 

"  There  is  something  hi  the  contemplation  of  general  laws,  which  power- 
fully induces  and  persuades  us  to  merge  individual  feeling,  and  to  commit 
ourselves  unreservedly  to  their  disposal ;  while  the  observation  of  the  calm, 
energetic  regularity  of  Nature,  the  immense  scale  of  her  operations,  and  the 
certainty  with  which  her  ends  are  attained,  tends,  irresistibly,  to  tranquilize 
and  reassure  the  mind,  and  render  it  less  accessible  to  repining,  selfish,  and 
turbulent  emotions." — SIR  J.  P.  "W.  HERSCHELL,  on  the  Study  of  Natural 
Philosophy. 

"  Science  may  attempt  to  comprehend  the  purposes  of  God,  as  to  the  des- 
tinies of  nations,  by  examining  with  care  the  theatre,  seemingly  arranged  by 
Him,  for  the  realization  of  the  new  social  order,  toward  which  humanity  is 
tending  with  hope.  For  the  order  of  Nature  is  a  foreshadowing  of  that  whicli 
is  to  be." — GUYOT'S  Earth  and  Man. 


UNION   FOUNDATIONS. 


TKUTH  is  King :  Cotton  and  Corn  are  subjects.  Nations, 
like  individuals,  owe  their  first  allegiance  to  truth,  wisdom,  and 
duty.  Now,  while  our  nationality  is  being  tested  and  proved, 
.while  trials  beset,  and  great  convulsions  perplex  us,  let  us, 
with  all-enduring  faith,  hold  fast  to  the  eternal  principles  of 
reality  and  right.  More  than  ever  amid  the  farying  phases 
of  a  fluctuating  contest,  do  we  need  to  stand  fast  on  eternal 
foundations.  Calmly  trusting  that  God  will  not  permit  chaos 
to  conquer  His  own  divine  order,  we  must  defend  those  social 
and  political  principles  which  we  have  sincerely  and  gratefully 
accepted  as  our  national  heritage  and  trust.  As  helpful  to 
this  end,  we  now  propose  to  examine  in  the  cold  light  of 
Science,  those  grand  Natural  realities  which,  through  the  ages, 
must  constitute  our  Union  Foundations. 

Science  interprets  God.  He  has  wrought  into  the  fabric  of 
material  nature  those  ideas  and  designs  which  He  has  chosen 
to  adopt.  The  inorganic  and  organic  worlds  are  thus  records 
of  Divine  thought  and  intent.  Science  reads  these  records. 
Through  long  historic  ages  the  mind  of  man  has  been  accu- 
mulating knowledge  and  slowly  gathering  to  itself  the  means 
for  deeper  and  clearer  insight.  Science  stands  in  the  attitude 
of  devout  inquiry,  within  the  courts  of  the  grand  temple  of 
Nature,  attentive  to  every  whisper  of  the  Divine  oracle.  Pier 
profoundest  faith  is  in  God,  who,  through  special  arrange- 
ments of  material  masses,  and  infinitely  diversified  mechanisms 
of  organic  structure,  has  expressed  His  own  mind,  will,  and 


8  UNION     FOUNDATIONS. 

nature.  Through  patient  toil  and  earnest  interrogation,  Sci- 
ence has  learned  much.  The  work  of  Nature-interpretation 
goes  on  with  increasing  success  and  with  ever-expanding  faith 
in  the  Designing  Author.  Intelligent  communion  with  Him 
augments  and  grows  intimate.  Loftier  views  and  grander  in- 
sights throng  upon  us.  The  higher  scientific  mind  of  to-day 
has  learned  to  see  in  and  through  "the  invariable  order 
of  occurrence  "  which  prevails  in  Nature,  a  grand  expres- 
sion of  God's  supreme  will,  unfolding  itself  by  a  secular  pro- 
gress. "What  once  was  Fate  is  now  our  Father's  will.  There 
is  no  more  brute  matter ;  we  see  only  materials  through  which 
the  Divine  will  expresses  itself  in  language  which,  however  im- 
perfectly comprehended  now,  will,  in  the  unfolding  order  of 
ages,  tell  forth  that  Wisdom  which  was  able  to  incorporate  all 
progress  in  a  germ. 

Man  is  part  of  Nature,  and  human  history  is  the  culmination 
of  Natural  history.  Divine  designing  has  wrought  out  in  man 
its  completest  earthly  expression.  A  long-drawn  geologic 
progress  and  a  parallel  organic  progress  have  reached  their 
climax,  and  perhaps  their  limit,  in  the  human  period.  Man, 
from  his  Eden  origin  to  his  expanded  and  complex  present, 
has  half  consciously  lived  out  into  an  epic  record  the  Divine 
legation  impressed  upon,  expressed  through,  and  vitalized  in 
human  nature.  Through  myriad  years  of  preparation,  the 
earth  had  been  prophetically  forming  for  man's  habitation,  and 
now,  for  six  thousand  years,  he  has  been  expanding  over  its 
surface,  and  through  all  fluctuations  has  been  shaping  it  to 
his  needs.  God  introduced  man  upon  earth  when  it  had  be- 
come fitted  to  be  his  habitation.  "We  but  express  the  profound 
and  fundamental  conviction  of  that  noble  school  of  Physical 
Geography  whereof  Humboldt,  Hitter,  and  Guyot  may  be 
named  as  expositors,  when  we  say  that  the  earth  was  not  only 
deliberately  framed  and  organized  to  be  man's  habitation,  but 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  Q 

so  specially  combined  as  to  prescribe  and  prophesy  the  actual 
order  of  human  history.  Man  and  his  earth-home  were  framed 
in  the  same  mutual  adaptation  and  coordination  which  we 
are  wont  to  see  between  the  house  and  its  inhabiting  family. 
When,  therefore,  we  study  the  relations  between  a  nation  and 
the  country  it  inhabits,  we  are,  in  strict  science,  striving  to 
read  the  Divine  will  as  concerning  that  nation.  Earnest  piety, 
duty  and  profound  policy  concur  in  demanding  that  nations 
shall  conform  to  the  Divine  will  as  expressed  in  their  condi- 
tions of  habitation.  The  nation  which,  with  true  insight,  sees 
and  accepts  the  Divine  purpose  in  its  existence,  can  not  fail  of 
that  best  prosperity  possible  for  it,  which  our  Father  had,  from 
the  measureless  past,  held  in  store  for  its  benediction.  On  the 
Other  hand,  a  nation  which  blindly  combats  its  God-given  con- 
ditions of  existence,  can  not  fail  to  suffer  frustration  and  those 
bitter  punishments,  masked,  perhaps,  under  the  guise  of  seem- 
ing prosperity,  which  are  kindly  ready  to  constrain  transgress- 
ing communities  back  into  the  right  path  of  national  life. 

A  survey  of  human  history  shows  a  well-defined  arid  easily- 
comprehended  progress,  from  the  rude  beginnings  among  no- 
madic tribes,  to  the  present  state  of  high,  but  unequal,  civiliza- 
tion. America  had  only  a  provisional  or  transient  population  of 
Indians,  until  Columbus,  three  hundred  and  seventy  years  ago, 
initiated  a  European  knowledge  of  our  continent.  Amid  the 
growth  and  decline  of  Old- World  nations,  the  knowledge  of  a 
New  World  was  held  in  reserve,  until  the  time  should  come  for 
its  colonization  under  conditions  conformed  to  the  Divine  plan  of 
development.  It  was  not  until  its  actual  discovery  that  the  intel- 
lectual, social  and  political  progress  of  Western  Europe  had 
formed  a  civilization  fit  to  be  transplanted  into  our  reserved  con- 
tinent. Not  until  man  had  attained  worthy  ideas  of  liberty  -and 
order ;  not  until  political  culture  had  ripened  into  a  systematic 
blending  of  individual  freedom  with  organized  government,  was 


10  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

it  Divinely  permitted,  that  the  permanent  population  of  this  con- 
tinent should  be  introduced.  Then,  by  degrees,  the  pressure  ol 
over-population  combined  -with  the  love  of  enlarged  liberty  to 
afford  the  emigration  needed  for  the  introduction  of  a  vigor- 
ous colonization.  Our  whole  history  has  plainly  shown  our 
national  function  to  be  one  which  concerns  humanity  at  large. 
Starting  with  a  clear  field  and  with  the  benefit  of  all  Asiatic 
and  European  experience,  it  was  the  mission  of  America  to 
carry  forward  social  organization  beyond  any  Old- World  type. 
The  Spanish- American  States,  having  failed  to  achieve  such 
progress,  the  execution  of  this  continental  mission  has  devolved 
wholly  on  the  United  States.  By  our  past  history,  we  have 
accepted  this  mission,  and,  until  1860,  we  were  apparently  in 
the  full  tide  of  success.  It  is  a  distinctive  feature  of  the  true 
American  that,  under  his  daily  activities,  he  cherishes  a  deep, 
abiding  consciousness  of,  and  faith  in,  this  grand  relation  of  his 
country  to  the  whole  human  progress.  This  is  to  him  not  only 
a  grand  and  hopeful,  but  a  fearfully  responsible  destiny.  Amer- 
icans can  not,  if  they  would,  hide  from  themselves  the  fact,  that 
the  future  of  a  continent  is  divinely  intrusted  to  their  fidelity, 
and  that  humanity  at  large  has  a  special  claim  on  them  truth- 
fully to  serve  its  cause. 

The  scientific  study  of  nature  throws  much  light  on  the 
question  as  to  "  what  constitutes  a  State."  Minds  which  have 
grown  familiar  with  the  organic  kingdom  and  the  grand  princi- 
ples of  organic  growth  and  structure,  can  hardly  fail  to  recog- 
nize that  nations  are  social  and  political  organisms,  and  that 
the  entire  human  family  constitutes  an  organism  of  still  higher 
generality.  Germs  and  eggs  are  developed  by  growth  into 
mature,  prolific  organisms.  So  do  nations,  from  germinal  be- 
ginnings or  colonies,  develop,  by  vital  growths,  into  imperial 
organizations,  which,  in  turn,  establish  colonies,  and  finally  die 
by  violence,  disease  or  senility.  The  Sothic  period  was,  by  the 


UNION     FOUNDATIONS.  11 

ancients  even,  called  the  lifetime  of  great  nations,  as  illus- 
trated in  the  Persian,  Grecian  and  Roman  empires.  Our  nation 
has  passed  through  its  feeble  infancy,  its  colonial  boyhood,  its 
bold  launch  into  independence,  and  its  early  years  of  young 
manhood.  Nations,  like  other  organisms,  pass  from  a  primal 
simplicity  of  structure  to  an  increasing  complexity  of  parts 
and  functions.  Nations  too,  like  organisms,  at  first  manifest 
but  slight  mutual  dependence  of  parts,  but  with  their  growth 
into  complexity,  their  functions  and  subdivisions  develop  an 
increasing  inter-dependence,  until  the  total  life  at  last  rests  on 
the  functional  perfection  of  each  portion.  Man's  practical  vo- 
cation is  to  labor.  As  society  progresses,  labor  is  subdivided 
or  specialized,  and  the  ecpnomic  prosperity  of  a  nation  depends 
on  the  perfection  of  this  labor-specialization,  or  on  the  proper 
correlation  of  its  specialties.  So  too  in  plants  and  animals, 
docs  progress  in  the  specialization  of  functions  and  functional 
organs  and  in  their  normal  correlation,  increasingly  mark  every 
step  from  germination  to  maturity. 

In  all  animal  embryos,  a  serous  layer  and  a  mucous  layer 
are  formed  around  the  yolk.  The  mucous  membrane  develops 
into  the  nutritive  system,  and  evolves  all  the  organs  for  prepar- 
ing food.  The  serous  membrane  develops  the  nervous,  muscu- 
lar, and  osseous  systems,  all  directing  their  actions  outward. 
So  too,  in  a  nation  of  high  organization,  there  is  a  food-pro- 
ducing class,  and  there  is  a  class  supplied  with  food,  whose  la- 
bors of  manufacture,  skill  and  administration  give  back  to  the 
food-producers  needful  compensations.  In  the  further  embry- 
onic progress,  the  vascular  layer  appears  between  the  serous 
and  mucous  layers,  and  develops  into  the  system  of  blood  ves- 
sels, whose  function  is  to  take  up  the  food  supplied  through 
the  mucous  or  nutritive  system,  and  to  curry  or  circulate  it  to 
the  serous  or  nervo-muscular  system,  or  wherever  it  is  needed 
for  growth  or  repairs.  Thus  in  the  social  growth,  commerce 


12  UNION     FOUNDATIONS. 

arises  to  interchange  food  and  materials,  whether  raw  or  man- 
ufactured. As  growth  progresses,  the  nutritive,  nervo-mus_ 
cular,  and  circulating  organs  grow  more  complex  and  special- 
ized, just  as  in  a  mature  community,  agriculture,  manufactures 
and  commerce  grow  ever  more  multifarious  and  special  in  their 
matter  and  methods.  The  sap  of  plants  and  the  blood  of  ani- 
mals are  the  analogues  of  the  mass  of  products  circulated  by 
commerce.  Liebig  compares  the  blood  discs,  which,  without 
"an  immediate  share  in  the  nutritive  process,  are  the  medium 
for  all  the  sustaining  activities  of  the  blood,"  to  money,  which 
is  "the  medium  of  all  activity  in  the  life  of  the  state."  The 
channels  of  blood  circulation  grow  complex,  as  organization  ap- 
proaches the  higher  and  maturer  types .:  so,  in  an  advanced  so- 
ciety, do  the  highways  of  commerce  grow  intricate.  The  main 
channels  of  commercial  circulation  are  capacious,  direct,  crowd- 
ed, and  rushing.  Main  arteries,  like  railroads,  send  rythmic 
pulses.  From  main  arteries  to  the  capillaries,  from  railroads 
to  the  footpaths,  there  is  increasing  ramification,  curvature, 
contraction,  slowness,  and  irregularity. 

The  most  important  analogy  between  a  national  and  an 
animal  organism  is  that  existing  between  the  governmental 
structure  and  the  nervous  system.  Nervous  organisms,  in  all 
animals,  consist  of  ganylionic  centres  and  nerve  trunks,  the 
ganglions  being  cellular  and  the  nerves  fibrous.  The  afferent 
or  sensory  nerves  bear  in  impressions  to  the  nervous  centres, 
and  the  efferent  or  motor  nerves  bear  outward  from  the  same 
centres  excitations  to  movement  by  muscular  contractions.  In 
many  animals  these  ganglionic  centres  are  repeated  freely 
without  diversity  of  function,  and  in  other  species  these  multi- 
plied, homogeneous  ganglions  are  continuously  connected  by 
nerve  trunks.  As  we  rise  from  the  simpler  to  the  more  com- 
plex and  highly  organized  animal  types,  the  multiplication  of 
ganglionic  centres  is  more  and  more  designed  to  control  special 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  13 

functions  by  special  ganglions.  Thus,  as  we  approach  the 
higher  forms,  not  only  do  we  find  special  ganglions  for  deglu- 
tition, respiration,  and  locomotion,  but  ganglions  of  special 
sense,  as  sight,  hearing,  taste,  &c.  Just  in  proportion  as  an- 
imal structures  rise  toward  higher  types,  do  some  of  the  an- 
terior ganglions  develop  into  preponderance ;  passing  from  an 
inappreciable  superiority  in  the  lower  forms,  up  to  the  fully  de- 
veloped brain  of  man.  Structural  rank  can  be  almost  meas- 
ured by  brain-preponderance.  As  multiplication  of  ganglions 
without  specialization  of  function  marks  low  or  rudimentary 
organization,  so  do  minute  ganglionic  specialization  and  uni-' 
fication  through  brain-government  indicate  high  organic  rank 
and  effective  endowment. 

In  a  nation,  the  governing  centralizations  are  the  ganglions  ; 
the  representative  agencies  which  inform  and  prompt  to  action 
are  the  afferent  nerves,  and  the  executive  agencies  which  en- 
force law  are  the  efferent  nerves.  A  single  absolute  head,  a 
patriarch  or  barbaric  king,  forms  a  one-ganglion  government. 
A  multitude  of  heads  essentially  independent,  a  league  of 
barons  bound  only  by  some  outside  pressure,  is  analogous  to 
animals  having  many  ganglions  of  like  function,  such  as  the 
inferior  articulata.  When  one  baron  among  many  grows  to 
superior  strength  and  influence,  he  becomes  the  cephalic  gan- 
glion, head  or  king.  When  his  dynasty  is  established  and  its 
strength  fully  acknowledged,  the  brain-predominance  becomes 
fixed  and  a  high,  articulate  structure  appears.  As  the  subor- 
dinate repositories  of  political  power  take  special  state  functions, 
the  vertebrate  structure  appears.  When  deliberate  legislation 
on  wise,  constitutional  foundations  supervenes,  the  function  of 
the  cerebrum  is  typified,  and  pure  mind  frames  the  measures 
which  dominant  will  energizes  as  effective  law. 

It  is  important  to  remark  that,  in  an  extended  country  like 
ours,  the  geographical  subdivisions  do  not  conform  to  diversities 


14  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

of  political  functions.  Throughout  the  country,  states  have 
severally  identical  functions,  as  have  the  counties  in  a  state,  and 
the  towns  in  a  county.  The  organic  interpretation  of  our  re- 
publican government  may  be  thus  stated.  Convenience  dictates 
subdivision  of  areas  into  states,  counties  and  towns.  The  town 
is  a  pure  democracy,  and  the  people  act  in  mass.  The  coun- 
ties act  in  such  functions  as  towns  cannot,  and  counties  can, 
appropriately  exercise.  The  states  act  in  such  functions  as 
counties  cannot,  and  states  can,  fitly  fulfill.  The  general 
government  acts  in  such  functions  as  the  states  cannot,  and 
the  general  government  can,  effectively  discharge.  The 
principle  is  that  of  graduation  of  governing  functions  by  lo- 
cality, so  that  each  grade  shall  exercise  those,  and  only  those, 
which  are  appropriate  to  it.  To  centralize  all  government 
for  a  vast  area,  in  a  single  absolute  head,  is  utterly  subversive 
of  freedom,  and  is  only  possible  by  absorbing  into  the  nervo- 
motor  system  of  the  centralized  head  so  much  of  the  nation's 
life  and  strength  as  will  crush  out  its  diffused  vitality.  Gov- 
ernmental diffusion  by  ganglionic  graduation  to  the  greatest 
convenient  extent,  gives  to  all  the  largest  freedom,  and  im- 
poses on  each -grade  of  governing  centres  only  such  a  mini- 
mum and  adapted  charge  as  belongs  to  its  place  in  the  scale. 
To  the  individual  is  thus  left  all  the  freedom  possible.  Or- 
ganically speaking,  this  graduation  of  governing  ganglions 
specializes  their  functions.  Thus  the  individual,  town,  coun- 
ty, state  and  general  government  severally  exercise  the 
special  functions  appropriate  to  their  places  on  the  scale.  The 
elective  and  representative  process  is  functionally  analogous 
to  afferent  nerve-action,  by  sending  in  to  the  several  grades 
of  ganglionic  centres  representative  impressions  from  the 
people,  as  data  for  deliberative  consideration.  To  this  affer- 
ent system  belong  the  various  associations  which  embody  the 
voices  of  the  manifold  special  interests  blended  in  a  commu- 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  15 

nity,  outside  of  its  technical  political  structure.  The  brain- 
functions,  of  intelligent  deliberation  upon  representative  im- 
pressions and  of  volition  in  legislation,  being  performed,  ex- 
ecutive agents  act  the  motor-nervous  part  in  the  practical  ex- 
ecution of  law.  In  the  normal  exercise  of  specially  assigned 
functions,  each  grade  of  ganglions  commands  those  below  it, 
and  obeys  those  above  it  on  the  scale. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  each  of  these  political  ganglions  is 
cerebral.  Cerebration  is  only  centralized  so  far  as  concerns 
the  centralized  functions.  Special  cerebration  in  graduation 
seems  to  be  the  organic  definition  of  our  form  of  government. 
We  have  before  indicated  functional  specialty  and  cerebral 
predominance  as  the  criteria  of  dignity  in  organic  types.  The 
signal  blending  of  both  in  our  government,  by  the  introduction 
of  systematic  sub-cerebration  and  of  graduated  governing 
functions,  is  organically  a  great  advance  over  previous  sys- 
tems. Should  complexity  be  objected  to  it,  we  need  but  re- 
mark that  increase  of  structural  complication  is  an  invariable 
attendant  on  organic  elevation.  Our  system  certainly  rests 
on  the  presumption  of  a  general  loyalty  in  each  component  to 
its  assigned  part ;  just  as,  in  all  high  organisms,  each  organ 
must  do  its  work,  or  all  will  suffer.  It  is  a  truly  significant 
fact,  that  this  system  of  graduated  government  should  have 
taken  shape  at  the  precise  time  it  did,  and  in  the  country 
which  emphatically,  by  its  vast  future,  seemed  to  demand  it. 

The  views  noAV  imperfectly  stated  are  not  barren.  Nothing 
can  make  the  heresy  of  secession  seem  more  heretical  than  to 
test  its  application  in  our  government,  when  viewed  as  an  or- 
ganism. Were  we  but  a  polype  nation,  fissiparous  division 
would  not  be  unnatural.  Were  we  but  some  brainless,  articu- 
late organism,  we  might  be  cut  in  two  and  each  half  might  be- 
come a  living  whole.  That  sub-cerebral  states  should  assume 
superiority  over  the  cerebral  general  government,  is  not  less 


16  UNION     FOUNDATIONS. 

monstrous  than  the  fantasy  of  a  peaceful,  painless  dismem- 
bering of  a  high  political  organism.  Treason  seemed  almost 
to  have  found  an  anesthetic  which  would  enable  a  nation  of 
high  and  sensitive  structure  to  be  cleft  in  twain,  unconscious 
of  the  dividing  edge. 

Secession  theories  rest  on  the  postulate  of  a  nation  'man- 
ufactured at  a  certain  date.  Nations  grow :  they  are  not 
made.  True  organisms,  they,  like  all  animate  beings,  grow 
from  embryo  to  old  age.  Their  governments  are  vital  reali- 
ties; not  parchments  nor  bargains.  Our  Constitution  as 
framed  and  signed  was  the  written  statement,  the  formal  ex- 
pression of  the  goverment  organically  embodied  in  our  people. 
The  framers,  with  wonderful  sagacity,  drew  forth  the  logic  of 
facts  as  they  stood,  and  shaped  our  governing  agencies  in  ex- 
quisite adaptation  to  the  growing  and  future  nation.  To  all 
this  obligation  of  fitness  was  superadded  that  of  plighted 
faith,  of  solemn  compact.  But  the  Constitution  is  no  mere 
contract  ^between  huckstering  states,  to  be  broken  on  shallow 
pretexts  of  interest  or  caprice.  Above  every  sanction  of  con- 
sent, it  expressed  the  grand  governing  system,  which  was 
then  and  is  now  a  natural  fact  in  our  people.  Under  this  for- 
mula, we  have  grown  into  an  expanded  national  development, 
and  are  now  bound  in  a  living  unity,  which  admits  of  sever- 
ance only  on  the  same  surgical  conditions  which  attend  all 
organic  amputations.  We  shall  do  well  ever  to  bear  in  mind 
this  living,  organic  nature  of  our  government,  and  not  to  rest 
an  unreasoning  faith  on  the  mere  verba  scripta  of  the  Con- 
stitution. This  instrument,  with  wondrous  insight,  provides 
for  its  own  modification,  to  insure  its  permanent  agreement 
with  the  natural,  organic  constitution  of  our  people  in  all 
stages  of  our  growth.  Too  exclusive  an  attention  to  the  his- 
toric phases  of  our  political  organism,  and  too  lawyer-like  a 
concentration  on  the  written  charter  which  formalized  it, 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  17 

have  perhaps  blinded  our  statesmen  to  the  profounder  organic 
entity,  which  lives  in  our  people,  and  which,  as  it  then  ex- 
isted, was  so  happily  appreciated  by  the  framers.  To  exalt 
legal  formalism  above  vital  realism  is  to  frustrate  Nature, 
or  to  breed  liberating  revolutions. 

Definiteness  of  external  form  and  external  protecting  envel- 
opes, are  among  the  most  distinguishing  and  universal  traits 
of  individual  organisms.  From  seed-time  to  sapless  age, 
every  plant  not  only  has  the  defined  form  of  its  species 
throughout  its  entire  development,  but  it  exists  under  the 
protective  covering  of  a  skin,  shell,  or  bark.  The  tender 
germ  is  enfolded  in  the  secure  heart  of  the  seed,  and  the  vital 
circulation  of  the  growing  bark  is  covered  by  a  hard,  protect- 
ing rind,  which  serves  only  for  defense.  The  egg,  whence 
all  animal  life  emanates,  is  encased  in  a  shell  or  protective 
layer,  under  cover  of  which  the  embryo  develops  an  outer 
defensive  skin,  while  all  the  most  vital  and  vulnerable  mem- 
bers are  formed  in  the  central  cavity.  From  the  embryonic 
ovisac  to  the  wrinkled  skin  of  old  age,  the  same  protective 
policy  is  consistently  exhibited  throughout  the  entire  animal 
kingdom.  The  skins  and  shells  of  radiates,  the  shells  of  mol- 
luscs, the  rings  of  articulates,  the  skins,  hair,  and  feathers  of 
vertebrates,  concur  in  testifying  that  organic  life  is  only  pos- 
sible for  individuals  possessiag  properly  defined  outer  bound- 
aries, and  externally  guarded  by  adequate  protective  envel- 
opes against  the  manifold  dangers  that  surround  them. 

So  is  it  with  a  nation.  National  life  is  conditioned  on  def- 
inite exterior  boundaries,  and  on  adequate  protective  fron- 
tiers. Organic  analogy  indicates  that  nations  should  only 
vary  their  boundaries  in  conformity  with  the  conditions  of  ex- 
pansion by  healthful  growth.  A  policy  of  ambitious  conquest, 
an  ungoverned  greed  of  territory,  find  no  sanction  in  organic 
law.  That  a  growing  nation  should  expand  into  such  needed 


20  UNION     FOUNDATIONS. 

other,  demanding  a  national  dismemberment  and  an  indepen- 
dent sovereignty  for  the  seceded  states.  Even  were  we  in- 
different to  the  dignity  and  integrity  of  our  government,  and 
ready  by  a  total  sacrifice  of  our  self-respect  to  seek  peace  on 
any  terms,  we  could  hardly  concede  the  division  called  for. 
Any  attempt  to  trace  a  boundary  would  raise  insuperable 
difficulties.  Delaware,  Maryland,  Kentucky  and  Missouri, 
which  have  never  enacted  the  secession  juggle,  would  be 
vehemently  claimed  as  due  to  the  South.  We  should  be  ex- 
pected, either  to  abandon  our  capital,  or  to  leave  it  under  the 
guns  of  a  foreign  power.  Fortress  Monroe  and  the  Norfolk 
Navy-yard  would  be  required  at  our  hands.  Western  Virginia, 
including  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  railroad,  would  be  graciously 
accepted.  A  joint  interest  in  the  navigation  of  the  Ohio 
might  be  kindly  conceded  us,  but  when  we  reach  the  Father 
of  Waters,  we  must  at  once  consent  to  intersect  it  by  a  foreign 
boundary.  West  of  the  Mississippi,. there  would  appear  to  be 
no  clue  to  a  boundary  except  to  yield  whatever  might  be  ask- 
ed. In  the  Gulf  we  should  be  invited  to  relinquish  Pensacola, 
Tortugas  and  Key  West.  The  time  would  hardly  have  come 
to  make  a  mare  clausum  of  the  Gulf,  but  the  great  North- 
West  would  most  truly  have  become  a  terra  clausa.  The 
Pacific  States,  having  lost  all  faith  in,  and  respect  for,  the  re- 
mains of  the  United  States,  would  of  course  set  up  for  them- 
selves. 

When  secession  was  inaugurated,  the  cotton  states  were  to 
cut  loose  and  the  border  states  were  to  keep  the  peace  and 
protect  Cottondom  by  interposing  a  neutral  ground.  When 
the  epidemic  took  hold  of  the  border  states,  slavery  itself 
was  to  fix  the  boundary.  The  north  line  of  the  slave  states 
was  then  the  definite  cleavage- trace  accepted  by  the  South, 
when  a  more  vaulting  ambition  did  not  purpose  to  annex,  and 
provincialize  the  upper  valley  of  the  Mississippi.  This  sim- 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  21 

pie  plan  has  failed.  Four  slave  states  have  not  seceded,  one 
has  split  and  one  is  in  large  part  reclaimed.  The  loyal  states 
have  fought  valiantly  for  the  pristine  Union,  and  the  Upper 
valley  of  the  Mississippi  is  fully  purposed  to  tolerate  no 
foreign  domination  of  its  great  river.  There  is  no  indication 
that  even  a  simple,  geometrical  line  of  true  political  separation 
could  be  drawn ;  and  even  were  such  a  trace  agreed  upon,  it 
could  not  possess,  in  even  the  most  moderate  degree,  the  proper 
requisites  for  a  defensive  frontier.  It  is  a  physical  fact  that 
there  is  no  such  separating  line  across  the  territory  of  the 
United  States ;  no  possible  frontier  on  which  the  parts  of  a 
divided  union  could  rest  in  mutual  security.  Had  we  then 
every  disposition  to  concede  nationality  to  the  seceded  states, 
we  could  find  no  line  which  would  serve  us  as  a  defensive 
boundary.  We  should  open  ourselves  to  attack  not  only  from 
the  South,  but  from  the  South  reenforced  by  such  European 
allies  as  might  join  flags  with  slavery.  Perhaps  combined 
British  and  Southern  attack  on  three  sides  might  endanger 
our  dismembered  nationality.  We  think  it  could  not ;  but  we 
are  sure  that  we  should  show  a  signal  lack  of  wisdom  were  we 
now  to  make  such  an  attack  possible. 

Nor  could  any  supposable  separating  line  be  permanent. 
Nature  has  given  no  hint  of  any  such  deliberate  purpose. 
The  elements  of  the  present  contest  are  not  of  a  character  to 
rest  side  by  side  in  peace,  out  of  respect  to  some  wire-drawn 
parallel  of  latitude  of  treaty  adoption.  History  repeatedly 
shows,  how  in  far  less  "  irrepressible  conflicts,"  strong  physi- 
cal boundaries  have  failed  to  arrest  border  raids,  and  chronic 
recurrences  of  hostility.  We  could  never  bring  ourselves  to 
regard  any  separating  line  as  for  ever  obligatory.  There  can 
be  no  boundary  between  the  United  and  seceded  States,  which 
will  rise  above  the  rank  of  a  belligerent  compromise  line  ;  and 
no  possible  peace,  through  disunion,  can  be  more  than  a  truce. 


22  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

This  is  a  solemn  and  irrefragable  fact ;  a  fact,  consequent  not 
on  feeling  only,  but  on  imperious  natural  realities,  -which 
must  inspire  and  govern  our  national  future.  In  order  to  a 
clearer  appreciation  of  this  momentous  declaration,  we  will 
briefly  consider  some  leading  general  features  of  American 
Physical  Geography  and  Social  Development. 

We  will  first  state  some  prime  data  and  principles  of  Phy- 
sical Geography.  The  land  masses  of  the  Earth  compose  six 
single  or  three  double  continents :  Asia- Australia,  Europe- 
Africa,  and  North  and  South  America,  whose  respective  areas 
in  geographical  miles,  as  given  by  Guyot  are,  Asia,  14,128,- 
000;  Australia,  2,208,000;  Europe,  2,688,000;  Africa, 
8,720,000;  North  America,  5,472,000,  and  South  America, 
5,136,000.  Humboldt  deduced  the  following  average  eleva- 
tions above  the  sea:  Asia,  1,151  feet;  Europe,  671  j  North 
America,  748,  and  South  America,  1,132.  Their  respective 
lengths  of  shore-line  and  areas  in  geographical  square  miles 
to  each  mile  of  shore-line  are,  Asia,  30,800  and  459 ;  Aus- 
tralia, 7,600  and  290 ;  Europe,  17,200  and  156 ;  Africa, 
14,000  and  623;  North  America,  24,000  and  228,  and 
South  America,  13,600  and  376.  The  general  course  of  the 
Old  World  mountain-ranges  is  latitudinal ;  the  great  Andes 
and  Rocky  Mountain  backbone  of  the  New  World,  is  nearly 
meridional.  The  three  northern  continents  are  temperate 
and  arctic ;  the  three  southern  are  tropical  and  sub-tropical. 
The  historic  course  of  empire  is  westward,  along  the  north 
temperate  zone.  Cold  closes  the  great  arctic  plains  to  human 
habitation ;  heat  gives  the  torrid  zone  chiefly  to  the  tropical 
races.  Civilization  has  lingered  near  shores  through  South- 

O  o 

ern  Asia,  the  Mediterranean  basin,  Western  Europe,  and 
North  America.  Sea-coasts,  islands,  peninsulas,  and  river 
valleys,  have  attracted  and  governed  man's  migrations,  and 
developed  his  faculties.  The  freely  intersected  and  vastly 


.UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  28 

diversified  surface  of  the  Old  World  along  the  historic  zone, 
has  stimulated  man's  physical  and  mental  powers,  thus  orig- 
inating and  ripening  his  civilization. 

The  general  structure  of  the  North  American  Continent  is 
strikingly  simple.  The  Sierra  Madre  and  Rocky  Mountain 
system,  extending  4,000  miles  north-westerly  from  the  Isthmus 
to  the  Arctic  Ocean,  is  the  grand  axis  of  upheaval.  A  vast 
triangular  plain,  resting  on  this  great  mountain  barrier,  as  a 
base,  projects  its  vertex  outward  to  the  remote  coast  of  La- 
brador. This  magnificent  continental  plain,  having  an 
average  elevation  above  the  sea,  of  between  600  and  700  feet, 
and  nowhere  in  mass  exceeding  2,500  feet,  unlike  the  vast, 
bleak,  sterile  and  frozen  table-lands  of  Asia,  which  in  Thibet 
reach  an  elevation  of  14,000  feet,  has  every  orographical,  cli- 
matic, and  fertile  requisite  for  playing  a  master  part  in  the 
grand  drama  of  human  progress.  The  table-lands  of  Bavaria 
and  Spain  are  elevated  much  above  even  the  summit  lines  of 
this  great  American  expanse.  Except  in  a  few  limited  moun- 
tain ridges,  this  area  nowhere  loses  its  productive  capacity  by 
reason  of  its  altitude ;  nor  do  we,  on  the  other  hand,  find  dis- 
proportionate spaces  sacrificed  to  swamps. 

The  general  distribution  of  this  continental  plain  is  in  two 
great  slopes,  declining  respectively  toward  the  Gulf  of  Mexico, 
and  toward  Hudson's  Bay,  and  the  Arctic  Ocean.  A  low 
east  and  west  swell,  without  any  well-defined  ridge  or  crest, 
traverses  this  plain.  Starting  from  the  high  base  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  between  the  parallel  head-waters  of  the 
Missouri  and  Sasketachewan  Rivers,  where  it  is  about  3,000 
feet  high,  this  swell  divides  the  Missouri  head-waters  from 
those  of  the  Red  River  of  the  North,  sinking  near  the  latter 
to  1,350  feet,  and  rising  around  the  head-waters  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi to  about  1,700  feet.  A  short  distance  west  of  Lake 
Superior,  this  swell  divides  near  the  source  of  the  Mississippi, 


24  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

elevated  1,680  feet,  and  forks  around  the  basin  of  the  great 
Lakes  and  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  south  ridge  divides  the 
Lake  and  Ohio  tributaries  at  an  elevation  of  from  1,000  to 
1,300  feet,  the  Genesee  and  Alleghany  Rivers  at  1,488  feet, 
sinks  in  the  Hudson  and  Champlain  Valley  to  140  feet,  and 
rises  opposite  Quebec  to  1,500  feet.  The  north  fork  of  this 
swell,  dividing  the  Lake  and  Lawrentian  basin  from  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  basin,  sinks  near  Lake  Simcoe  to  1,100  and  1,200 
feet,  and  rises  again  opposite  Quebec  to  1,500  feet.  As  we 
proceed  from  the  treeless  polar  plains  of  the  Mackenzie  River 
basin,  southerly  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  we  traverse  2,400 
miles  of  our  great  continental  plain,  nowhere  rising  above 
an  elevation  of  1,700  feet,  nowhere  observing  any  bold  con- 
trasts or  transitions,  and  yet,  by  the  whole  transit,  we  pass 
from  arctic  mosses  to  tropic  palms.  The  east  and  west  pro- 
files of  this  plain  exhibit  a  slight  general  declivity  eastward, 
from  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Atlantic.  They  also  show 
a  great  variety  of  features  which,  however,  leaves  almost  the 
entire  area  within  fertile  conditions.  It  would  seem  that 
Providence  designed  throughout  this  continental  plain,  to  de- 
rive meridional  variety  from  simple  climatic  gradations,  and 
latitudinal  variety  from  diversity  of  surface  features. 

The  North  American  continent  consists  of  the  following 
subdivisions. 

The  Atlantic  Slope,  passing  from  the  St.  Lawrence  down 
the  coast,  including  Florida  and  a  portion  of  the  Gulf  slope 
to  Mobile  Bay,  is  drained  by  rivers  with  short  courses,  run- 
ning in  general  perpendicular  to  the  coast.  This  inclined 
slope  or  plain,  varies  from  50  to  200  miles  in  width,  and  the 
elevation  of  its  upper  margin  ranges  from  140  to  over  1,000 
feet.  It  is  throughout  its  whole  extent,  free  from  well  marked 
transverse  ridges,  and  profiles  parallel  to  the  coast  will 
show  a  plain-like  continuity,  intersected  by  no  effective 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  25 

separating  features.  The  ocean  frontage  constitutes  an 
effective  union  bond,  by  connecting  this  narrow  slope  in  a 
coastwise  navigation.  This  slope  is  b'ke  the  half  of  a  river 
basin;  the  coasting  trade  thus  becomes  analogous  to  the 
Mississippi  river  trade,  and,  like  that,  it  is  a  powerful,  natural 
connecting  bond. 

The  Appalachian  Mountain  System*  extends  in  a  N.  E. 
and  S.  W.  direction  1,300  miles,  from  the  promontory  of 
Gasp6  on  the  Gulf  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  to  North  Alabama 
where  it  sinks  down  into  the  approximately  level  strata  form- 
ing the  Gulf  Slope.  This  mountain  system  consists  of 
numerous  nearly  parallel  ridges  or  folds,  which  are  distributed 
into  two  general  ranges,  separated  from  each  other  by  a  nar- 
row valley,  nearly  continuous  from  N.  to  S.  and  called  the 
Appalachian  Valley.  This  is  locally  known  as  the  Champlain, 
Hudson,  Kittatiny  or  Cumberland  Valleys,  the  Great  Virginia 
Valley  and  the  Valley  of  East  Tennessee,  and  it  varies  from 
an  average  breadth  of  15  miles  in  the  N.  E.  to  about  10  in 
Virginia,  and  60  in  Tennessee.  The  chain  of  mountains  to 
the  eastward  of  this  long  valley,  is  made  up  of  the  Green 
Mountains  in  Vermont,  the  Highlands  in  New  York,  the 
South  Mountains  in  Pennsylvania  and  the  Blue  Ridge  in 
Virginia,  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee,  including  therein 
the  Black,  Iron,  Smoky  and  Unaka  Mountains.  The  White 
Mountains  of  New  Hampshire,  though  partially  isolated,  be- 
long to  this  chain,  as  being  the  central  mass  of  a  curved  sweep 
in  the  Green  Mountains  and  heights  of  land  extending  to- 
wards Gasp6.  The  chain  of  mountains  west  of  the  Appala- 
chian Valley  includes  the  Adirondack,  Cattskill,  Alleghany 
and  Cumberland  ranges,  and  extends,  with  some  interruption, 
from  Northern  New  York  to  Middle  Tennessee.  The  Appala- 

V 

*  See  Prof.  Guyot'a  admirable  paper  in  the  American  Journal  of  Science, 
March,  1861. 


24  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

elevated  1,680  feet,  and  forks  around  the  basin  of  the  great 
Lakes  and  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  south  ridge  divides  the 
Lake  and  Ohio  tributaries  at  an  elevation  of  from  1,000  to 
1,300  feet,  the  Genesee  and  Alleghany  Rivers  at  1,488  feet, 
sinks  in  the  Hudson  and  Champlain  Valley  to  140  feet,  and 
rises  opposite  Quebec  to  1,500  feet.  The  north  fork  of  this 
swell,  dividing  the  Lake  and  Lawrentian  basin  from  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  basin,  sinks  near  Lake  Siincoe  to  1,100  and  1.200 
feet,  and  rises  again  opposite  Quebec  to  1,500  feet.  As  we 
proceed  from  the  treeless  polar  plains  of  the  Mackenzie  River 
basin,  southerly  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  we  traverse  2,400 
miles  of  our  great  continental  plain,  nowhere  rising  above 
an  elevation  of  1,700  feet,  nowhere  observing  any  bold  con- 
trasts or  transitions,  and  yet,  by  the  whole  transit,  we  pass 
from  arctic  mosses  to  tropic  palms.  The  east  and  west  pro- 
files of  this  plain  exhibit  a  slight  general  declivity  eastward, 
from  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Atlantic.  They  also  show 
a  great  variety  of  features  which,  however,  leaves  almost  the 
entire  area  within  fertile  conditions.  It  would  seem  that 
Providence  designed  throughout  this  continental  plain,  to  de- 
rive meridional  variety  from  simple  climatic  gradations,  and 
latitudinal  variety  from  diversity  of  surface  features. 

The  North  American  continent  consists  of  the  following 
subdivisions. 

The  Atlantic  Slope,  passing  from  the  St.  Lawrence  down 
the  coast,  including  Florida  and  a  portion  of  the  Gulf  slope 
to  Mobile  Bay,  is  drained  by  rivers  with  short  courses,  run- 
ning in  general  perpendicular  to  the  coast.  This  inclined 
slope  or  plain,  varies  from  50  to  200  miles  in  width,  and  the 
elevation  of  its  upper  margin  ranges  from  140  to  over  1,000 
feet.  It  is  throughout  its  whole  extent,  free  from  well  marked 
transverse  ridges,  and  profiles  parallel  to  the  coast  will 
show  a  plain-like  continuity,  intersected  by  no  effective 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  25 

separating  features.  The  ocean  frontage  constitutes  an 
effective  union  bond,  by  connecting  this  narrow  slope  in  a 
coastwise  navigation.  This  slope  is  like  the  half  of  a  river 
basin;  the  coasting  trade  thus  becomes  analogous  to  the 
Mississippi  river  trade,  and,  like  that,  it  is  a  powerful,  natural 
connecting  bond. 

The  Appalachian  -Mountain  System*  extends  in  a  N.  E. 
and  S.  W.  direction  1,800  miles,  from  the  promontory  of 
Gaspe  on  the  Gulf  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  to  North  Alabama 
where  it  sinks  down  into  the  approximately  level  strata  form- 
ing the  Gulf  Slope.  This  mountain  system  consists  of 
numerous  nearly  parallel  ridges  or  folds,  which  are  distributed 
into  two  general  ranges,  separated  from  each  other  by  a  nar- 
row valley,  nearly  continuous  from  N.  to  S.  and  called  the 
Appalachian  Valley.  This  is  locally  known  as  the  Champlain, 
Hudson,  Kittatiny  or  Cumberland  Valleys,  the  Great  Virginia 
Valley  and  the  Valley  of  East  Tennessee,  and  it  varies  from 
an  average  breadth  of  15  miles  in  the  N.  E.  to  about  10  in 
Virginia,  and  60  in  Tennessee.  The  chain  of  mountains  to 
the  eastward  of  this  long  valley,  is  made  up  of  the  Green 
Mountains  in  Vermont,  the  Highlands  in  New  York,  the 
South  Mountains  in  Pennsylvania  and  the  Blue  Ridge  in 
Virginia,  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee,  including  therein 
the  Black,  Iron,  Smoky  and  Unaka  Mountains.  The  White 
Mountains  of  New  Hampshire,  though  partially  isolated,  be- 
long to  this  chain,  as  being  the  central  mass  of  a  curved  sweep 
in  the  Green  Mountains  and  heights  of  land  extending  to- 
wards Gasp6.  The  chain  of  mountains  west  of  the  Appala- 
chian Valley  includes  the  Adirondack,  Cattskill,  Alleghany 
and  Cumberland  ranges,  and  extends,  with  some  interruption, 
from  Northern  New  York  to  Middle  Tennessee.  The  Appala- 

V 

*  See  Prof.  Guyot'a  admirable  paper  in  the  American  Journal  of  Science, 
March,  1861. 


26  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

chian  Mountain  system  is  remarkable  as  possessing  no  grand 
central  ridge,  but  in  its  place  appears  the  long  valley  or 
"negative  axis"  already  described.  A  great  number  of 
parallel  ridges,  broken  at  short  intervals,  give  a  series  of 
fruitful  valleys  and  transverse  gaps,  through  which  river 
courses,  highways  and  railroads  find  passage.  The  general 
tendency  of  the  system  is  to  greater  elevation  in  going  South, 
and  the  culminating  region  is  at  the  southern  end,  where  the 
great  upheaval  dies  out  abruptly  into  the  Atlantic  and  Gulf 
plain.  Black  Dome,  or  Mitchell's  Peak,  the  highest  point  not 
only  of  the  Appalachian  system  but  east  of  the  Kocky  Moun- 
tains, rises  to  6,707  feet  and  at  least  twenty-four  summits  of  the 
southern  culminating  section  overtop  Mount  Washington,  the 
culminating  point  of  the  northern  section,  which  is  only  6,228 
feet  high.  Mount  Mansfield,  (the  Chin,)  the  highest  summit  of 
the  Green  Mountains,  is  4,430  feet  high,  and  Mount  Marcy, 
the  apex  of  the  Adirondacks,  is  5,379.  The  western  slope  of 
the  Appalachian  Mountain  system  rises  from,  or  dies  into,  a 
broad  plateau  base,  averaging  about  1,000  feet  in  elevation. 

The  portion  of  the  great  continental  plain  included  be- 
tween the  Appalachian  and  Rocky  Mountain  chains,  is  com- 
posed of  three  great  areas,  forming  the  Hudson's  Bay  and 
Arctic  basins,  the  Lake  and  St.  Lawrence  basin  and  the 
Mississippi  basin. 

The  Hudson's  Bay  Basin  offers  so  little  useful  land  that, 
in  a  general  view,  it  must  be  held  as  Arctic  and  nearly  un- 
inhabitable. More  to  the  west,  the  Arctic  Slope  extends  so 
much  farther  south,  that  the  valley  of  the  Red  River  of  the 
North  may  have  an  important  future. 

The  valley  of  the  Great  Lakes  and  St.  Lawrence  is 
unique  in  the  world.  The  area  of  the  lakes  and  river  is 
94,000  geographical  square  miles,  (each  equal  to  ff  £  statute 
square  miles,)  while  the  entire  basin  of  which  they  are  part 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  27 

only  measures  297,600  geographical  square  miles.  That  so 
small  a  surface  should  feed  such  large  reservoirs,  seems  re- 
markable even  when  we  regard  them  as  simple  river  expansions. 
The  area  of  this  basin  equals  10  Po  basins,  4 1  Rhine,  7  Elbe, 
li  Dnieper,  and  37  Connecticut  basins.  Considering  the 
small  evaporation  in  this  latitude,  it  is  not  perhaps  mysterious 
that  one-third  the  total  area  of  this  basin  consists  of  water 
evaporating  surface,  besides  which  the  Niagara  and  St.  Law- 
rence are  duly  supplied.  Lake  Ontario  is  231  feet  high  and 
6.300  geographical  square  miles  in  area ;  Erie,  565  and 
9,600 ;  St.  Clair,  570  and  360 ;  Huron,  600  and  20,400  ; 
Michigan,  600  and  22,400;  Superior,  630  and  32,000. 
The  drainage  summits  along  the  rim  of  this  basin  being  only 
1,500  feet  or  less  in  elevation,  all  fertile  lands  therein  offer  a 
promise  of  tillage,  after  yielding  their  present  wealth  of  forest 
products.  This  wealth,  intercepted  from  the  sea  in  great  part 
by  the  rapids  and  ice  of  the  Niagara  and  St.  Lawrence,  has 
found  a  signal  natural  compensation  in  that  remarkable 
depression  of  the  Appalachians  which  made  the  Erie  and 
Oswego  Canal  outlets  possible. 

The  Mississippi  Basin*  includes  most  of  the  vast  plain 
between  the  Appalachian  and  Rocky  Mountain  systems.  Its 
area  is  1,244,000  statute  square  miles  and  exceeds  that  of 
the  whole  continent  of  Europe,  exclusive  of  Russia,  Norway 
and  Sweden.  The  Amazon  basin  alone  upon  earth  exceeds 
it,  and  this  has  more  than  once  and  a  half  its  development. 
The  frozen  Obi  lacks  some  70,000  square  miles  of  equaling 
it,  the  La  Plata  is  nearly  $,  the  Yenesei  about  £,  the  Lena, 
Amour,  Hoang-Ho,  Yang-tse-Kiang  and  Nile,  about  £  each, 
the  Ganges  less  than  |;  the  Indus  less  than  1,  the  St.  Law- 
rence and  Lake  basin  less  than  |,  the  Oronoco,  a  little  over  £, 

*  See  the  elaborate  and  important  report  of  Captain  A.  A.  Humphreys  and 
Lieut.  H.  L.  Abbott  on  the  Mississippi  River,  1861. 


28  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

the  Euphrates  1,  the  Columbia  and  Rio  Grande,  each  less 
than  -i,  the  Delaware,  jj-^,  and  the  Connecticut  T|-.  On  this 
vast  space  fifteen  Rhine  basins  would  find  room,  England  and 
Wales  might  be  twenty-one  times  repeated,  and  Continental 
France  be  six  times  superposed.  Over  300,000  square  miles* 
in  Texas  and  New  Mexico,  belonging  to  the  same  structural 
category  as  the  Mississippi  Basin  proper,  are  not  included  in 
these  statements,  and  need  not  be  separately  discussed. 

Ideas  formed  on  the  contracted  scale  of  the  river  basins  of 
Western  Europe,  need  to  be  rudely  shocked  by  forcible  ex- 
hibits of  the  immense  magnitudes  of  the  Mississippi  River 
system.  Nor  are  conceptions  based  on  the  vast  'but  sterile 
Siberian  basins  more  adequate.  The  high  plateaus  and  im- 
mense mountain  spaces  of  Southern  Asia,  make  even  the 
rivers  of  China  and  India  somewhat  fallacious  guides  when 
we  would  investigate  the  capacities  of  the  Mississippi  basin 
for  human  habitation.  There  is  no  great  river  basin  on  the 
globe,  which  approaches  it  in  its  proportion  of  useful  fertility, 
and  especially  in  cereal  productive  power.  In  Illinois,  for  in- 
stance, corn  can  be  raised  at  from  eight  to  twelve  cents  per 
bushel  and  wheat  at  from  twenty-five  to  thirty  cents.  Hardly 
an  acre  in  the  55,405  square  miles  of  this  state  is  naturally 
unproductive ;  hence  we  need  hardly  wonder  that  in  the  last 
decade  (1850-60,)  her  population  has  advanced  from  851, 470 
to  1,711,753. 

Throughout  the  Mississippi  basin  there  is  sufficient  rain  to 
give  effect  to  the  fertility  of  the  soil.  The  annual  average  is 
30.4  inches,  of  which  one-fourth  or  21,300,000.000,000 
cubic  feet  are  discharged  into  the  Gulf.  The  annual  rain-fall 
ranges  from  68.4  inches  in  Louisiana  to  13.1  at  Fort  Union. 
In  the  Ohio  and  Upper  Mississippi  Valleys,  the  annual  fall 
ranges  from  24.0  inches  at  Fort  Snelling  to  50.9  at  West 

*  Statute  miles  are  meant  unless  otherwise  stated. 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  29 

Salem  in  Southern  Illinois.  The  decrease  of  rain-fall  is  pro- 
gressive and  general  from  South  to  North,  and  a  prevailing 
decrease  is  observable  in  receding  from  the  Mississippi  River, 
either  east  or  west,  but  it  is  far  more  marked  as  in  going 
westward,  we  approach  the  Rocky  Mountains.  It  seems  to 
be  a  correct  general  statement  of  facts,  that,  starting  from  the 
mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  there  is  a  gradual  decrease  of  rain- 
fall as  we  ascend  the  river  or  any  of  its  tributaries. 

It  is  not  easy  to  realize  the  immense  areas  of  the  secondary 
basins,  drained  by  the  chief  tributaries  of  the  Mississippi. 
Starting  at  the  mouth,  we  first  reach  the  Red  River  basin, 
which  contains  97,000  square  miles,  on  which  the  average 
rain-fall  is  39  inches,  of  which  i  is  discharged.  The  Red 
River  is  1,200  miles  long,  and  has  its  source  2,450  feet  high 
though  at  Preston,  380  miles  below,  it  is  but  641  feet.  The 
Yazoo  basin  has  an  area  of  13,850  square  miles,  and  an 
average  rain-fall  of  46.3  inches  of  which  -*-  are  discharged. 
At  Horn  Lake,  500  miles  from  its  mouth,  the  Yazoo  is  210 
feet  high.  The  Arkansas  and  White  River  basin  has  an 
area  of  189,000  square  miles,  and  an  annual  rain-fall  of  39 
inches,  \  of  which  is  discharged.  The  Arkansas  has  its  source 
1,514  miles  from  its  mouth,  and  at  the  height  of  10,000  feet. 
At  Fort  Atkinson,  1,095  miles  from  its  mouth,  it  is  2,331 
feet  high,  and  its  mouth  is  162  feet  high.  The  St.  Francis 
basin  measures  10,500  square  miles,  and  has  41.1  inches 
annual  rain-fall,  -1-  of  which  is  discharged.  Its  source  is 
380  miles  from  its  mouth,  is  1,150  feet,  and  its  mouth  is  200 
feet  high.  The  Ohio  basin  has  an  area  of  214,000  square 
miles,  and  41.5  inches  of  rain-fall,  of  which  -/4-  are  discharged. 
The  Ohio  at  Coudersport,  1,265  miles  from  its  mouth,  is 
1,649  feet  high,  and  its  mouth,  near  Cairo,  is  275  feet.  At 
Pittsburg,  975  miles  up,  the  elevation  is  699  feet,  and  at 
Cincinnati,  515  miles  up,  it  is  432  feet.  The  Missouri  basin 


30  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

has  an  area  of  518,000  square  miles  and  an  average  rain-fall 
of  20.9  inches,  of  which  -/-  are  discharged.  The  Missouri 
is  2,908  miles  long  to  its  Madison  Fork  source,  which  is 
about  6,800  feet  high,  while  Fort  Benton,  2,644  miles  up,  is 
2,845  feet,  and  the  mouth  near  St.  Louis,  is  381  feet  high. 
The  Upper  Mississippi  basin,  above  the  junction  with  the 
Missouri,  contains  169,000  square  miles,  and  has  35.2  inches 
rain- fall,  of  which  ~  are  discharged.  The  river  course  is 
1,330  miles,  and  its  source  is  in  a  tributary  of  Itasca  Lake, 
at  the  elevation  of  1,680  feet.  It  rises  in  a  region  of  lakes 
and  swamps,  entirely  free  from  mountains.  From  source  to 
mouth,  the  Mississippi  River  is  2,616  miles  long,  and  the 
Mississippi-Missouri  River  is  4,194  miles  long.  The 
total  length  of  all  the  streams  in  the  Mississippi  river-system 
could  hardly  be  estimated,  but  it  has  been  computed  that  they 
afford  40,000  miles  of  navigable  water.  Between  the  several 
tributaries  of  the  Mississippi,  thetchief  of  which  rise  in  the 
Appalachian  and  Rocky  Mountains,  there  are  no  separating 
mountain  ranges.  The  Ozark  Mountains  alone  rise  from  this 
great  basin,  a  short,  limited  and  isolated  range,  without 
general  significance.  The  Lake  and  Lawrentian  Valley  is  as 
it  were  a  counter-sloped  tributary,  and  no  emphatic  separation 
distinguishes  it,  as  may  be  realized  when  we  remember  that 
Bellefontaine,  the  highest  land  in  Ohio,  is  only  1.400  feet 
high.  Careful  consideration  of  the  several  heights  stated, 
will  sufficiently  indicate  the  general  plain-like  structure  of 
the  great  area  west  of  the  Appalachians  from  which  the  river 
valleys  have  been  excavated. 

Nearly  midway  between  the  Mississippi  River  and  the 
Pacific  coast,  the  plain-like  character  which  distinguishes  the 
valley  proper,  disappears,  abruptly  in  some  parts,  in  others 
by  degrees.  This  ill-defined  line  marks  the  base  of  the  true 
eastern  slope  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  We  are  still  quite 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  31 

unable,  confidently  to  generalize  the  features  of  the  broad 
domain  between  that  line  and  the  Pacific,  which  is  so  com- 
plex in  structure,  and  so  imperfectly  explored,  that  geologists 
must  expend  patient  years  of  observation  before  attaining  a 
reliable  basis  for  idealization.  Geographically,  this  region 
contains,  within  our  boundaries,  980,000  square  miles,  and 
measures  on  its  longest  cross-section,  from  San  Francisco  via 
Salt  Lake  to  Fort  Laramie,  about  1,000  miles,  or  1,125  by 
extending  it  to  the  secondary  range  of  the  Black  Hills.  Its 
axis  or  general  structural  direction  is  north  20°  west.  This 
is  but  a  section  or  fragment  of  the  great  mountain-system  of 
the  earth,  represented  on  our  double  continent  by  the  Andes, 
Cordilleras,  and  Rocky  Mountains,  and  which  as  Lt.  Warren 
remarks,  is  nearly  on  a  great  circle  from  Cape  Horn  north 
to  Bherings  Straits,  and  thence  across  Asia  to  Sumatra,  thus 
ranging  through  two-thirds  of  the  circumference  of  the  globe. 
There  has  been  so  much  theorizing  without  facts,  and  map- 
ping without  surveys,  on  this  western  portion  of  the  United 
States,  that  limitation  to  realities  is  not  now  easy.  The 
various  Coast  Survey,  Boundary,  Topographical  and  Pacific 
Rail  Road  surveys,  afford  much  and  almost  the  only  reliable  in- 
formation in  this  field.  With  Lt.  Warren's  map  and  the 
Pacific  Rail  Road  profiles  spread  before  us,  it  still  remains 
difficult  securely  to  go  beyond  some  crude  discussion. 

It  will  not  be  doubted  that  the  mass  between  the  western 
margin  of  our  continental  plain  and  the  Pacific  Ocean,  be- 
longs to  a  single  vast  upheaval,  in  which  the  entire  cosmic, 
great-circle,  mountain  system  participated.  The  knowledge 
actually  obtained  will,  perhaps,  justify  us  in  tracing  a  struc- 
tural analogy  between  the  Appalachian  and  the  West- Amer- 
ican mountain  system.  We  have  defined  the  Appalachian 
system  as  composed  of  two  parallel  grand  ranges,  separated 
throughout  by  the  Appalachian  valley,  all  trending  parallel 


32  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

to  the  Atlantic  coast.  Similarly,  we  find  running  par- 
allel to  the  Pacific  coast,  two  grand  ranges  separated  by  a 
broad  elevated  valley.  The  Cascade  range,  Sierra  Ne- 
vada. Coast  range,  and  the  Peninsular  range  of  Lower  Cali- 
fornia, form  a  grand  chain  which,  starting  in  the  Arctic  zone 
and  reaching  its  culmination  in  Mount  St.  Elias,  thence 
slopes  downward  and  disappears  under  the  sea  in  Lower  Cali- 
fornia. The  grand  interior  chain,  consisting  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  and  Sierra  Madre  or  Cordilleras,  extends  from 
the  Arctic  Ocean  to  the  Isthmus,  rising  gradually  from  the 
north  to  its  culmination  in  Popocatepetl,  and  thence  declin- 
ing to  the  moderate  elevations  at  Panama,  Both  of  these 
chains  are  complicated  and  irregular  in  structure,  and  are 
freely  intersected  by  passes,  and  even  by  water-courses.  In- 
tervening between  them  is  the  broad,  elevated,  and  irregular 
valley  of  upheaval,  drained  in  part  by  Frazers,  Columbia, 
and  Colorado  Rivers.  It  is  possible  that  this  valley  may  be 
a  true  plateau,  but  the  progress  of  exploration  tends  to  take 
from  it  this  character,  by  interpolating  subordinate  interven- 
ing mountain-ridges,  such  as  the  Humboldt,  Wahsatch,  Blue, 
Mogoltcn,  and  numerous  other  minor  ranges  already  made 
known.  On  each  of  the  Pacific  Rail  Road  routes  explored, 
four  or  more  summits  were  crossed,  and  it  can  hardly  be 
doubted  that  the  ultimate  result  of  complete  surveys  will  be 
to  define  a  great  number  of  limited  ridges  intervening  be- 
tween the  two  grand  chains,  and  observing  a  general  law  of 
parallelism  with  them,  complicated  by  some  centres  of  up- 
heaval from  which  mountain  crests  radiate.  The  analogy  of 
Appalachian  structure  may  re-appear  in  a  wave-system  of 
ranges  and  valleys,  with  transverse  passes  and  over-lappings. 
It  may  be  remarked  that  there  is  a  general  elevation  of  this 
grand  valley  from  north  to  south.  The  great  Columbia  Plain, 
west  of  the  Spokane,  on  the  Stevens'  railroad  route,  is  raised 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  33 

* 

at  the  highest  2,340  feet,  and  averages  about  2,100.  The 
upper  valley  of  Snake  River  is  about  2,500  feet ;  Salt  Lake 
is  4,238,  and  Humboldt  River  Valley,  also  forming  part  of  the 
Great  Basin,  averages  about  4,300  feet.  The  valley  of 
Grand  River  is  about  4,500  feet,  and  the  Colorado-Chiquito 
Valley,  about  5,000.  The  plateau  of  the  Sierra  Madre,  and 
the  Llano  Estacado  or  Staked  Plain,  are  about  4,500  feet, 
while  the  Guadaloupe  Pass,  which  connects  these  areas  across 
the  Eastern  Mountain  chain,  is  only  5,717.  The  table-land 
of  Anahuac  or  Mexico,  is  from  6,000  to  8,000  feet  high  ;  the 
city  of  Mexico  being  7,471.  These  average  levels  of  the 
broadest  known  areas,  which  are  here  named  in  regular  order, 
from  north  to  south,  indicate  a  general  ascent  southward 
through  the  West- American  Valley  ;  the  apparent  exception 
in  the  Sierra  Madre  plateau,  being  possibly  a  secular  result 
of  local  diluvial  waste.  This  upward  slope  tends  to  counter- 
act the  increase  of  heat  with  diminishing  latitudes,  thus  pre- 
serving a  temperate  climate  even  in  Mexico. 

An  unfortunate  result  of  the  position  and  structure  of  the 
West- American  Mountain  and  Valley  system,  is  that  a  lack 
of  rain  and  consequent  sterility  exists  to  some  extent  over  all 
this  region  except  along  the  narrow  Pacific  slope.  It  is  too 
early  to  speak  positively,  but  there  is  apparently  little  hope 
that  a  proportionate  population  can  find  support  in  this 
900,000  square  miles.  Between  the  Rocky  Mountain  ridge 
and  the  western  edge  of  the  continental  plain,  is  a  sterile  belt 
varying  from  200  to  400  miles  wide,  in  which  poverty  of  soil 
and  lack  of  rain  conspire  to  prohibit  extended  culture.  The 
same  sad  fate  broods  over  a  large  portion  of  the  Grand  Valley, 
which  has'  a  sterile  soil,  and  is  cut  off  from  rains  by  the  moun- 
tains running  North  and  South  on  each  side.  Winds  from  the 
Atlantic,  almost  discharged  of  moisture  in  their  long  transit 
over  the  Mississippi  Valley,  reach  the  mountain  region  with 
^'  3 


34  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

• 

but  little  water  for  precipitation.  On  the  other  hand,  winds 
from  the  Pacific,  being  intercepted  bj  the  Cascade  range  and 
the  Sierra  Nevada,  while  they  give  rain  to  the  Pacific  slope, 
fail  to  transport  and  precipitate  moisture  in  the  amount  needed 
for  the  great  valley.  Enough  is  precipitated  by  the  action  ol 
the  mountain  crests  to  give  fertility  and  especially  grazing 
capacity  to  a  limited  area  of  valley  slopes  and  bottoms,  where 
the  soil  favors.  This  amounts  to  a  valuable  natural  provision 
for  the  mining  population,  which  is  sure  to  be  required  in 
developing  a  mountain  mineral  wealth  now  almost  unknown ; 
but  cereals  can  never  be  largely  produced  in  this  region. 
The  favored  valley  around  San  Francisco  Bay,  thanks  to  the 
moderate  relief  of  the  coast  range,  has  a  happy  dispensation 
from  sterility.  This  basin  and  the  Pacific  slope  or  coast  belt, 
averaging  about  sixty  miles  wide,  within  our  boundaries, 
form  the  chief  land  of  agricultural  promise  throughout  this 
great  western  domain.  Enough  is  known  to  foreshadow  a 
future  of  mining,  with  auxiliary  agriculture  and  grazing,  for 
the  West- American  mountain  and  valley  system ;  a  future 
which  will  bond  itself  naturally  and  indissolubly  to  the  fertile 
Mississippi  Valley  by  the  operation  of  the  already  initiated 
Pacific  railroad. 

Having  reviewed  the  main  physical  or  structural  features 
of  this  continent,  and  especially  of  our  own  national  domain, 

jjfl 

we  are  now  entitled  emphatically  to  renew  the  declaration 
that  nature  has  provided  no  east  and  west  line  of  separation 
between  the  seceded  and  loyal  states.  All  the  grand  structural 
subdivisions  of  our  territory,  except  the  Lake  basin,  are 
essentially  meridional  in  direction.  The  Atlantic  coast  and 
slope,  and  the  Appalachian  Mountain  system,  run  N.  E.  and 
S.  W.  This  mountain  system  has  its  southern  extremity 
turned  by  the  broad  gulf  slope,  and  it  is  so  freely  traversed 
by  practicable  routes,  that  even  were  it  revolved  into  an  east 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  35 

and  west  direction,  it  would  be  but  an  imperfect  frontier.  The 
great  Mississippi  basin  has  the  axis  or  trunk  of  its  tree-like 
river  system,  almost  perfectly  meridional.  The  Rocky 
Mountains,  the  great  Western  Valley,  the  Pacific  mountain 
chain,  the  Pacific  slope,  and  the  Pacific  coast,  have  a  generally 
concurrent  N.  W.  and  S.  E.  direction.  This  average  me- 
ridional distribution  not  only  prevents  any  natural  bounda- 
ries from  east  to  west,  but  creates  a  singularly  powerful  system 
of  bonds  between  the  North  and  South  zones  of  our  domain. 
It  would  seem  that  the  cosmic  Designer  shaped  all  the  phys- 
ical features  of  our  country,  as  if  purposely  to  stabilitate 
American  unity  against  the  disruptive  tendencies  of  diversity 
in  climate,  interest,  origin,  or  feeling. 

The  Atlantic  coast  navigation,  penetrating  on  various  lines 
far  into  the  interior  of  the  Atlantic  slope,  binds  the  portions 
of  this  long  and  narrow  tract  by  an  all-absorbing  coasting 
trade.  The  railroad  system  east  of  the  Appalachians  strongly 
corroborates  this  sea-coast  bonding,  both  by  its  routes 
parallel  to  the  coast  and  by  those  which  bring  down  their 
tribute  from  the  interior  to  the  coast  as  to  a  vast  river.  The 
Appalachian  Valley  converts  even  the  mountain  system  which 
it  divides,  into  a  north  and  south  bond,  by  the  railroad  route 
it  offers. 

It  is  impossible  to  over-estimate  the  influence  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi river-system  in  binding  all  the  area  drained  by  it, 
into  a  compact  and  powerful  organic  whole.  The  immense 
commerce  already  developed  on  the  forty  thousand  miles  of 
navigable  rivers  in  this  system,  is  but  the  twilight  before  the 
dawn.  Every  year  of  pacific  union  must  expand  its  vast  pro- 
portions, until  the  Gulf,  the  Florida  Channel,  and  the  Gulf 
Stream  shall  be  known  but  as  its  crowded  entrance  way  or 
outer  mouth.  Besides  this  exterior  current  of  commerce, 
there  is  an  interior  interchange  of  such  magnitude  that  the 


36  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

analogy  of  the  rain-fall,  only  one-fourth  of  which  finds  its  way 
to  the  Gulf,  may  perhaps,  represent  the  relations  of  total  and 
exterior  movement.  The  eye  can  scarcely  inspect  a  map  of 
the  Mississippi  and  its  tributaries,  without  being  struck  with 
its  arborescent  form.  This  tree-likeness,  itself  the  analogue 
of  the  system  of  blood  vessels  in  animals,  has  a  profound 
meaning.  It  asserts  to  the  eye,  what  experience  has  for  years 
been  unfolding  in  fact,  that  this  river  system,  this  mechanism 
for  commercial  circulation,  is  an  organic  unity,  owing  its 
very  vitality  to  that  unrestrained  freedom  for  self-develop- 
ment, which  it  has  hitherto  enjoyed.  To  dismember  it  is 
death  ;  to  restrict  it,  is  strangulation.  To  permit  the  mouth 
of  the  Mississippi  to  be  in  foreign  hands  is  to  permit  a  grasp- 
ing hand  on  our  throat.  That  hand  might  not  actually  press 
our  jugular  vein,  but  the  indignity  remains,  and  the  threat 
of  strangulation  is  hardly  less  objectionable  than  the  reality. 
The  men  of  the  Upper  Mississippi  Valley  can  only  look  upon 
a  foreign  custody  of  the  mouth  of  their  river  system  as  an 
outrage  to  be  resisted  forever.  They  instinctively  and  pro- 
foundly feel  that  when  God  made  the  Mississippi,  He  also 
made  the  Union,  and  that  to  sever  what  He  so  conjoined,  is 
to  war  against  heaven,  and  to  war  as  vainly  as  did  Lucifer. 
Divide  the  Mississippi !  better  divide  a  tree  at  half  its  height 
and  expect  the  top  to  grow !  The  ostentatious  concession  of 
free  navigation  is  like  the  politeness  of  a  burglar,  in  asking 
you  to  sup  with  him  upon  your  own  dainties  and  at  your  own 
table. 

As  if  to  make  more  clear  the  indivisibility  of  the  Missis- 
sippi basin,  the  actual  railroad  routes  included,  strikingly 
resolve  themselves  into  north  and  south  lines,  bonding  the 
Gulf  and  the  Lakes  in  significant  union.  The  organic  and 
indestructible  unity  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  would,  by  its 
inherent  vitality,  be  ever  asserting  itself  against  any  lines  of 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  37 

separation  our  weakness  or  dereliction  might  inaugurate. 
He  can  have  but  slender  comprehension  of  our  physical  geog- 
raphy, -who  does  not  recognize  this  unity,  and  who  does 
not  see  therein  a  Divine  assertion  of  the  substantial  unity  of 
this  continent.  Just  because  the  vast  and  fertile  Mississippi 
basin  is  strictly  a  unit,  must  our  country  and  the  continent 
have  a  united  future.  This  valley  so  largely  exceeds  the  At- 
lantic and  Pacific  slopes,  and  the  West- American  valley,  in 
productive  resources,  that  its  influence  must  be  permanently 
dominant.  This  fact  involves  nothing  alarming,  as  the 
bonds  of  union  and  amity,  which  have  joined  the  eastern 
slope  with  the  Mississippi  Valley,  and  which,  through  the 
Pacific  railroad,  will  increasingly  bind  the  West- American 
system  to  it,  are  based  in  Nature,  and  are  thoroughly  recip- 
rocal. The  Rocky  Mountains,  indeed,  furnish  a  perfect 
natural  boundary,  (the  only  one  on  our  continent,)  were  sep- 
aration thereon  desirable,  but  even  this  divellent  possibility 
will  yield  to  the  superior  bonding  force  of  that  great  des- 
tined highway,  which,  like  an  artificial  river,  will  spread  its 
branches  along  the  Rocky  Mountains,  in  the  great  western 
valley,  and  over  California,  Oregon,  and  Washington,  devel- 
oping their  vast  mineral  resources,  and  returning  food  from 
St.  Louis  and  manufactures  from  the  east. 

The  east  is  bound  to  the  Mississippi  Valley  by  many 
other  ties  than  lineage  or  consanguinity.  Continuity  is  a 
powerful  bond.  From  Boston  to  St.  Louis,  the  traveler  is 
conscious  of  no  break.  There  are  great  diversities,  but  no 
place  affords  suggestions  of  boundaries,  and,  indeed,  the  bare 
idea  of  seeking  a  boundary  between  east  and  west,  is  physi- 
cally even  more  absurd  than  the  like  search  as  between  north 
and  south.  Stronger  even  than  consanguinity,  contiguity  or 
constitution,  is  the  bonding  force  of  that  vast  system  of  travel 
and  transportation  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  West,  which 


38  UNION     FOUNDATIONS. 

though  now  but  partially  developed,  stands  unrivaled  in  the 
world.  The  Great  Lakes  were  a  partial  answer  beforehand 
to  the  need  of  inter-communication  between  the  East  and  West, 
and  will  eternally  enforce,  as  by  Divine  sanction,  their  friendly 
and  compact  union.  Niagara  Falls,  the  rapids  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence, that  river's  ice-bound  mouth,  and  the  wondrous  stretch- 
ing forth  of  the  Hudson  valley  toward  Lakes  Ontario  and 
Erie,  form  the  God-given  charter  of  New  York  city,  and  for- 
ever ordain  it  as  the  true  outlet  of  the  Great  Lakes,  and  the 
port  of  entry  for  our  continent.  It  is  the  great  American 
metropolitan  heart,  through  which  the  life-renewing  streams 
of  domestic  and  foreign  commerce  must  ever  circukte  in  pul- 
sating rhythm,  along  arterial  and  venous  highways  to  and 
from  every  portion  of  our  vast  continental  plain.  This  can 
best  be  appreciated  as  a  fact  by  considering  the  magnitude 
and  growth  of  the  lake  trade. 

The  five  lake  States,  in  1850.  produced  252,000,000  bush- 
els of  cereals,  and  in  1860  the  amount  rose  to  354,000,000. 
The  cereals  carried  on  the  lakes  in  1861,  amounted  to 
101,819,596  bushels,  of  which  Chicago  shipped  54,167,007, 
Milwaukie,  18,778,629,  Toledo,  18,706,510,  Detroit, 
7,167,450,  and  other  ports,  estimated,  3,000,000.  In  the  east- 
ward march  of  this  commerce,  Buffalo  trans-shipped  over  one 
half  of  the  total  by  the  Erie  Canal,  Oswego  nearly  one  sixth 
by  the  Oswego  Canal,  Dunkirk  and  Suspension  Bridge  one 
eleventh  by  railroad,  other  points  nearly  one  twelfth,  and 
one  twelfth  went  down  the  St.  Lawrence  by  Montreal.  The 
annual  value  of  merchandise  and  agricultural  products  carried 
on  the  lakes,  is  now  between  two  and  three  hundred  millions 
of  dollars.  In  1861  the  Erie  Canal  carried  to  tide- water 
2,980,144  tons,  of  which  2,158,425  tons  consisted  of  bread- 
stuffs.  The  New  York  Central  Railroad  in  1861,  delivered 
435,956  tons  of  through  down  freight.  The  New  York 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  39 

Canal  receipts  have  gone  up  from  $1,723,945  in  1859  to 
$4,725,707  in  1862,  to  August.  The  toll  receipts  -were 
$722,829  in  the  single  month  of  July,  1862.  Our  exports 
of  breadstuffs  and  provisions,  almost  entirely  transported 
over  the  Erie  Canal  and  the  parallel  railroads,  was  valued  at 
$12,341,901  in  1821 ;  $10,624,130  in  1836 ;  $9,636,650 
in  1838;  $16,743,421  in  1845;' $68,701,921  in  1847; 
$77,187,301  in  1856  ;  .$93,969,682  in  1861,  and  for  1862, 
a  still  larger  aggregate  will  be  reached.  The  cereal  imports 
of  Great  Britain  amounted  to  37,918,000  bushels  in  1846, 
when  the  corn-laws  were  repealed,  and  had  risen  to 
115,059,000  bushels  in  1860,  the  increase  being  largely  de- 
rived from  our  inexhaustible  stores.  Russia,  the  great  grain 
shipping  country  of  the  Old  World,  exported  only  27,000,000 
bushels  in  1854,  and  49,000,000  in  1857,  or  less  than  one- 
half  our  grain-crop  moved  on  the  lakes  in  1861.  Already 
the  State  of  New  York  produces  barely  one  third  of  the  wheat 
it  consumes,  and  New  England  only  enough  for  three  weeks' 
consumption.  The  total  cereal  products  of  the  United  States 
were,  in  bushels — 

1S50.  I860. 

Wheat 100,485,941  171,183,381 

Eye 14,183,813  20,916,236 

Indian  Corn 592,011,104  830,451,707 


Total 706,745,861  1,022,611,374 

The  value  of  flour  and  meal  produced  during  the  years 
ending  July  1,  1850  and  1860,  is  thus  distributed — 


1850.  1860.       Per  cent,  increase. 


New  England  States  

$6,320,486 

$11,155,445 

76.5 

Middle  States  

63,433,179 

79,086,411 

1C.5 

Western  States  , 

42,673,992 

96,038,794 

125.0 

Southern  States  

16,531,817 

30,767,457 

85.5 

Pacific  States  

....     1,888,332 

6,096,262 

222.8 

Total $135,897,803        $223,141,369  64.2 


40  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

The  great  fact  stands  out  boldly  that  the  "West  is  not  only 
to  feed  the  East,  but  is  to  supply  European,  and  especially 
British  deficiencies.  The  wheat  grown  in  Illinois,  at  twenty- 
five  to  thirty  cents,  and  the  corn  for  eight  to  twelve  cents,  by 
the  mere  movement  'of  transportation,  commands  New  York 
and  European  prices,  four  or  five  times  the  cost  of  production. 
Such  being  the  vast  importance  and  bonding  power  of  the 
lakes,  canals,  and  railroads,  they  become  a  perpetual  guaran- 
tee of  firm  union  between  East  and  West.  The  Grand  Trunk 
Railroad,  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Welland  Canal,  the  Erie 
and  Oswego  Canals,  the  New  York  Central  and  Great  West- 
ern Railroads,  the  New  York  and  Erie  Railroad,  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Central  Railroad,  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad, 
with  their  several  connections  and  extensions,  constitute  a 
system  of  east  and  west  routes  for  travel  or  traffic,  such  as  no- 
where else  exists ;  a  system  bonding  east  and  west,  with  a 
force  even  exceeding  the  north  and  south  bonding  force  of 
the  Mississippi,  and  the  parallel  railroads.  If  any  one  thinks 
the  great,  dominating,  prolific  West  will  consent  to  be  shut 
in  by  a  foreign  South  and  a  foreign  East,  he  is  so  blind  that 
he  should  be  dumb. 

Western  railroads  are  everywhere  cheaply  constructed, 
and  Western  rivers  are  gentle  in  slope  and  therefore  easy  of 
navigation,  simply  because  the  Mississippi  Valley  is  a  great 
plain ;  thus  throughout  this  area,  free  inter-communication  by 
locomotive  and  steamboat,  is  naturally  provided.  This  same 
plain-like  structure  also  forbids  the  general  prevalence  of 
water-power  adapted  to  manufacturing  uses.  But  water- 
power  and  coal  are  the  only  bases  of  large  manufacturing 
organizations.  Water-power  being  in  general  forbidden  to 
the  West  by  the  same  structure  which  gives  it  fertility  and 
free  inter-communication,  it  must  look  to  coal  for  supplying 
the  deficiency.  It  has  an  enormous  area  of  coal  strata,  but 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  41 

it  is  a  notable  fact  that  the  coal-beds  grow  less  rich  as  we  go 
west.  Our  country  has  192,000  square  miles  of  coal  fields, 
which  is  twenty  times  the  total  European  coal  area.  The 
Appalachian  fields,  extending  from  Pennsylvania  to  Tusca- 
loosa,  contain  70,000  square  miles,  and  in  the  Schuylkill 
anthracite  basin,  there  are  about  fifty  seams,  twenty-five  being 
workable.  The  Pittsburg  bituminous  field  has  twenty  beds, 
ten  being  workable.  The  Michigan  field  of  15,000  square 
miles  is  poor,  with  only  two  or  three  workable  beds.  The 
Illinois,  Indiana,  and  Kentucky  basin,  containing  50,000 
square  miles,  has  twelve  beds,  seven  being  supposed  work- 
able. The  Western  basin  in  Iowa,  Missouri,  and  Arkansas, 
containing  57,000  square  miles,  has  six  or  seven  beds,  three 
or  four  being  supposed  workable.  We  might  thus  infer  that 
coal  mining  would  be  permanently  most  profitable  toward  the 
east,  a  view  which  is  strikingly  supported  by  the  actual 
statistics  of  our  coal  production.  The  total  coal  product  in 
1850  was  valued  at  $7, 173, 750,  and  in  1860,  at  $19,395,765. 
Of  this  last  amount,  Pennsylvania  alone  gave  75.9  per  cent., 
consisting  of  9,307,332  tons  of  anthracite,  worth  $11,869,574, 
and  66,994,295  bushels  of  bituminous,  worth  $2,833,859, 
or  a  total  of  $14,703,433.  Virginia  produced  9,542,627 
bushels,  worth  $690,188,  and  Ohio  28,339,900  bushels, 
worth  $1,539,713.  These  facts  indicate  that  the  Appalachian 
field  is  the  great  dynamic  storehouse  of  our  country,  as  it 
is  the  one  best  provided  with  transportation  outlets  by 
water. 

The  Appalachian  Mountain  system  also  affords  most  of  the 
useful  water-power  within  the  United  States,  and  its  structure, 
especially  in  the  Northern  section,  is  remarkably  adapted  to 
produce  convenient,  constant,  and  sufficient  water-privileges. 
When  this  combination  of  available  water-power  and  pro- 
ductive coal  strata  in  the  eastern  section  of  our  country  ia 


42  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

considered,  it  is  as  manifestly  the  Divine  plan  that  this  should 
be  the  American  manufacturing  region,  as  it  is  that  the 
prairies  are  designed  for  agriculture,  the  Gulf  slope  for  cotton 
fields,  or  the  West- American  mountain  regions  for  mining. 
New  England  and  the  Middle  states  are  already  conscious  of 
their  destiny.  It  is  well  known  that  England  owes  much  of 
her  present  development  to  a  happy  conjunction  of  iron  and 
coal  beds,  and  to  the  ease  of  transportation  given  by  her  rail- 
way system  and  insular  character.  Pennsylvania,  our  iron 
and  coal  state,  is  in  nowise  less  favored  by  nature.  New 
England  and  New  York,  dowered  with  vast  water-power  and 
easy  water  and  railway  transport,  lack  nothing  but  time  and  a 
wise  economy  to  complete  the  triumph  in  manufacturing  pro- 
duction, already  so  well  begun.  If  happily  kbor  is  dearer 
here  than  in  Europe,  wheat,  cotton,  and  the  American  market 
are  nearer.  Political  economy*  demands  that  agricultural 
and  manufacturing  production  should  be  brought  into  close 
neighborhood,  and  we  cannot  much  longer  sin  against  reason 
and  nature  by  interposing  two  Atlantic  voyages  between  the 
farmer  and  the  factory,  whenever  this  can  be  avoided.  When 
God  placed  the  Mississippi  Valley  alongside  the  Appalachian 
Mountain  system,  it  was  that  raw  material,  manufactures,  and 
food  might  sustain  each  other  in  friendly  Union,  while  supply- 
ing man's  chief  wants  by  a  free  interchange  within  a  single, 
happy  nationality. 

Among  the  most  sacred  duties  of  those  who  are  specially 
charged  with  directing  the  future  of  our  continent,  is  that  of 
excluding  the  European  system  of  great  standing  armies  and 
armaments.  If  the  "  balance  of  power  "  system  exacts  such 
costly  offerings,  we  cannot  too  energetically  suppress  all  ten- 
dencies toward  such  a  policy  on  American  soil.  Europe  now 
maintains  in  its  peace-armies,  about  four  millions  of  soldiers, 
*  See  Carey's  Works. 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  43 

and  expends  on  its  military  peace  establishments,  exclusive  of 
navies,  about  four  hundred  and  sixty  millions  of  dollars  an- 
nually, besides  the  loss  by  time  taken  from  industrial  pursuits, 
which  is  estimated  at  one  hundred  and  forty  millions.  Thus 
Europe  is  six  hundred  millions  of  dollars  poorer  every  year 
because  of  its  military  organizations,  besides  the  vast  interest 
payments  for  old  wars,  and  current  naval  expenditures.  Each 
modification  of  the  equilibrium  between  states  results  in  wars 
more  or  less  general  and  destructive.  It  were  better  for  us,  even 
on  economic  grounds,  to  fight  out  our  present  battle  to  the  bit- 
ter desolating  end,  than  to  perpetuate  war  and  armaments  by 
now  consenting  to  that  division  of  domain  which  must  bring 
upon  us  the  European  system  of  military  establishments, 
debts,  and  wars.  Our  loss  by  the  systematic  abstraction  of 
labor  from  production  would  in  a  few  years  exceed  the  cost  of 
our  present  painful  contest.  Heaven  help  us  if  we  are  driven 
to  exchange  our  old  peace  organizations  for  the  exhaustive  and 
demoralizing  system  which  has  long  cursed  European  states, 
which  now  burdens  them  to  the  verge  of  bankruptcy,  and 
which  taxes  labor  to  the  last  point  of  endurance  in  behalf  of 
a  squad  of  bondholders.  The  practical  effect  of  preserving  the 
Union  intact,  will  be  to  save  us  from  this  fate,  and  to  realize, 
so  far  as  America  is  concerned,  the  project  of  a  congress  of 
nations,  in  behalf  of  peace,  our  general  government  being  in 
fact  our  continental  umpire. 

The  capacity  of  the  United  States  to  sustain  population,  is 
but  imperfectly  comprehended,  even  by  our  most  sagacious 
minds.  Looking  exclusively  to  the  capacity  of  our  land  for 
producing  cereals,  vegetables,  and  dairy  products,  the  following 
distribution  of  our  3,306,865  square  miles  into  four  grades  is 
a  reasonable  approximation.  The  first  grade  is  entirely  and 
hopelessly  sterile,  and  may  be  assumed  as  including  306,865 
square  miles.  The  second  grade,  which  we  will  assume  at  one 


44  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

million  square  miles,  has  but  very  slight  productive  capacity, 
but  can  raise  grass,  food,  and  forest  products  sufficient  to  sup- 
port fifty  persons  to  the  square  mile.  The  third  grade,  in- 
cluding probably  a  million  of  square  miles,  contains  the  in- 
ferior arable  lands,  which  are,  on  an  average,  fully  capable  of 
supporting  150  persons  to  the  mile.  The  fourth  grade, 
including  the  remaining  million  square  miles,  consists  of  the 
rich  arable  lands,  capable  of  sustaining  at  least  400  persons  to 
the  mile  by  existing  modes  of  culture.  This  estimate  will 
give  a  total  population  within  the  United  States  of  six  hundred 
millions,  when  our  territory  shall  be  fully  occupied.  It  is 
almost  certain  that  an  improving  system  of  agriculture  will 
very  greatly  increase  these  capacities,  and  that  one  .person  to 
each  acre,  or  640  to  the  mile,  in  the  fourth  grade,  would  not  be 
an  excessive  estimate.*  We  have  not  assumed  population 
rates  beyond  those  actually  existing.  Thus  England  and 
Wales  have  a  population  of  340  to  the  square  mile,  France 
183,  the  Austrian  Empire  146,  Prussia  163,  the  Kingdom  of 
Italy  216,  Belgium  411,  Massachusetts  157.83,  and  Rhode 
Island  183.71.  When  it  is  remembered  how  large  a  portion 
of  these  states  is  occupied  by  unproductive  mountains,  and 
that  our  prairie  soil  is  unequaled  in  fertility,  our  assumed 
rates  cannot  be  found  extravagant. 

The  actual  movement  of  our  population  through  seven  de- 
cades, as  shown  by  eight  census  enumerations,  is  as  follows : 
3,929,827  in  1790;  5.305,925  in  1800  ;  7,239,814  in  1810; 
9,638,131  in  1820;  12,866,020  in  1830;  17,069,453  in 
1840;  23,191,876  in  1850;  31,448,322  in  1860,  or 
31,747,514,  including  Indian  tribes,  etc.  The  ratios  of 
increase  in  these  successive  decades  are,  35.02  in  1790- 

*  A  writer  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  goes  so  far  as  to  estimate  that 
the  New  "World  can  support  a  population  of  3,600,000,000,  which  would  give 
to  the  United  States  a  much  larger  quota  than  we  have  supposed. 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  45 

1800,  and  successively,  36.45;  33.13;  33.49;  32.67; 
35.87 ;  35.59 ;  and  the  average  rate  is  34.6.  This  rate  slightly 
exceeds  that  assumed  by  Malthus  in  his  proposition  that  a 
nation,  unrestricted  in  its  supply  of  food,  will  double  in 
twenty-five  years.  Taking  the  rate  of  increase  per  decade  at 
33.33,  we  find  42,332,374  for  1870;  56,443,165  for  1880; 
75,257,553  for  1890;  100,343,404  for  1900;  133,791,205 
for  1910.  Making  due  allowances  for  all  probable  hindrances 
and  drawbacks,  we  can  hardly  doubt  that,  in  fifty  years  'from 
this  time,  there  will  be,  or  at  least  ought  to  be,  over  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  people  within  the  present  territory  of  the 
United  States.  A  continued  application  of  the  Malthusian 
rate  will  give  63,498,562  in  1885;  126,997,124  in  1910; 
253,994,248  in  1935;  507,988,496  in  1960;  1,015,967,982 
in  1985.  Thus  this  rule,  which,  for  80  years  past,  falls  short 
of  our  actual  increase  of  population,  gives  us  in  a  century  and 
a  quarter  over  a  thousand  millions.  It  is  not  too  much  soberly 
and  after  reasonable  allowances,  to  expect,  that,  in  case  our 
Union  is  preserved,  and  our  normal  growth  permitted,  our 
people  will  number  at  least  six  hundred  millions  before  four- 
teen new  decades  shall  bring  in  the  year  2000.  True  states- 
manship consists  not  in  the  cunning  management  of  political 
parties,  or  in  the  crafty  handling  of  foreign  relations,  but  in 
giving  to  the  far-off,  future  its  rightful  consideration  in  the 
policy  of  to-day.  The  six  hundred  millions  who  are  entitled 
to  inhabit  our  land  in  the  year  2000,  have  as  true  a  right  to 
influence  our  present  policy,  as  has  the  transient  personnel 
of  the  passing  generation.  No  man  is  fit  to  have  a  potential 
voice  in  the  conduct  of  our  national  affairs,  still  less  to  bear 
the  honored  name  of  statesman,  for  whom  the  developed 
America  of  the  future  is  not  a  living  and  consistent  reality 
by  which  he  habitually  and  conscientiously  shapes  his  present 
course.  Prophets  foretell,  but  statesmen  foreact. 


46  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

The  progress  of  the  United  States  in  physical  prosperity 
has  even  exceeded  that  of  its  population ;  thus  confirming  the 
reasonableness  of  the  anticipations  now  stated.  The  total 
value  of  our  domestic  manufactures  in  1850,  exclusive  of 
amounts  under  $500  per  annum,  was  $1,019,106,616,  and 
in  1860,  this  value  was  nineteen  hundred  millions,  or  $60.61 
per  capita  of  our  population.  The  increase  was  86  per  cent, 
in  the  decade,  and  123  per  cent,  greater  than  that  of  the  white 
population  in  the  same  time.  The  increase  of  annual  value 
of  our  manufactured  products  from  1850  to  1860  considerably 
exceeds  our  present  national  debt.  Our  manufactures  employ 
1,100,000  men  and  285,000  women,  directly  supporting  about 
one  sixth  of  our  population,  and  indirectly  supporting  another 
sixth,  or  a  third  directly  and  indirectly.  The  following  table, 
shows  the  values  and  the  ratio  of  increase  in  ten  years  of  some 
of  our  chief  manufactured  products  : 

1850.  I860.        Per  cent,  increase. 

Flour  and  Meal $135,897,806  $223,144,369  64.2 

Agricultural  implements 6,842,611  1T,802,514  160.1 

Pig  Iron 13,491,898  19,48T,T90  44.4 

Bar  and  rolled  Iron 15,938,786  22,248,796  39.5 

Steam  Engines  and  Machinery  27,998,334  47,118,550  68.2 

Iron  Founding 20,111,517  28,546,656  42. 

Coal 7,173,750  19,865,765  169.9 

Clothing 43,678,802  64,002,975  47. 

Lumber 68,521,976  95,912,286  63.9 

Cotton  goods 65,501,687  115,137,926  75.73 

Woolen  goods 45,281,764  •  68,865,963  52. 

Leather , 37,791,873  63,090,751  66.9 

Boots  and  Shoes 53,357,036  89,549,900  67.8 

In  1850,  our  banking  capital  was  $227,469,077,-  in  1860, 
it  was  $421,890,095.  In  1850,  the  true  value  of  real 
estate  and  personal  property  in  the  United  States,  was- 
$7,135,780,228,  and  in  1860,  it  was  $16,159,616,068;  the 
increase  being  $8,925,481,011,  or  126.45  per  cent.  In 
1850  there  were  113,032,614  acres  of  occupied  farm  lands 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  47 

improved,  and  180,528,000  unimproved.  In  1860,  these 
amounts  bad  advanced  to  163,261,389  and  264,508,244,  or 
fifty  millions  of  acres  were  brought  under  improvement  in  the 
decade.  The  cash  value  of  farms  was  $3,271,575,426  in 
1850,  and  $6,650,872,507  or  over  double  in  1860.  The 
value  of  farming  implements  and  machinery  was  returned  in 
1850  at  $151,587,638,  and  at  $248,027,496  in  1860.  The 
value  of  live  stock  in  1850  was  $544,180,516,  and  in  1860 
it  was  $1,107,49(5,216,  or  it  more  than  doubled  in  the  de- 
cade. The  tobacco  crop  advanced  from  199,752,655  Ibs.  in 
1850,  to  429,390,771  Ibs.  in  1860,  and  cotton  advanced  from 
2,445,793  bales  to  5,198,077.  The  value  of  slaughtered 
animals  rose  from  $111,703,142  to  $212,871,653.  Our 
railroad  system  exhibits  the  most  remarkable  increase,  from 
8,589  miles,  costing  $296,660,148  in  1850,  to  30,793  miles, 
costing  $1,151,560,829  in  1860.  No  candid  and  sagacious 
mind  can  fail  to  see  in  these  typical  facts  of  a  decadCj  which 
show  a  physical  progress  so  far  exceeding  our  increase  of  pop- 
ulation, the  real  and  well  assured  foundation  for  a  future 
national  growth  at  least  equal  to  the  preceding  estimate.  •  It 
remains  to  be  seen  how  far  the  blight  of  secession  will  frustrate 
our  normal  development. 

Two  great  anomalies  pervade  and  vitiate  our  national  pro- 
gress. Race  and  caste  create  discords  where  all  should  be 
harmony.  Black  and  white,  slave  and  free,  are  our  two 
serious  national  problems,  and  problems  which  we  shall  be 
compelled  to  solve.* 

*  Historically,  these  problems  stand  as  follows :  Our  total  colored  popu- 
lation was  757,363  in  1790;  1,001,436,  in  1800;  1,377,810  in  1810;  1,771,562 
in  1820;  2,328,642  in  1830;  2,873,758  in  1840;  3,638,762  in  1850,  and 
4,441,765  in  1860.  The  decadal  ratios  of  increase  are  (1790—1800),  32.23 ; 
37.58;  28.58;  31.45;  23.41;  26.62;  22.07;  averaging  28.85,  against  34.6 
for  our  total,  and  the  decadal  ratio  of  colored  increase  is  0.834  or  five  sixths  the 
ratio  of  increase  of  our  whole  population,  and  0.806  or  four  fifths  that  of  our 


48  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

Science  is  not  lacking  in  definite  instruction  upon  the  ques- 
tion of  races.  As  each  animal  species  has  its  own  limits  of 
habitation  on  the  earth's  surface  beyond  which  it  cannot  flour- 
ish, so  have  the  varieties  of  the  human  race.  There  are 
tropical  races  and  there  are  temperate  races,  each  thriving 
only  in  its  own  proper  climate.  The  man  of  the  tropics  not 
only  belongs  within  the  tropics,  but  suffers  by  transfer  to 
colder  regions.  Thus,  in  Rhode  Island  or  Connecticut,  the 
deaths  of  blacks  and  mulattoes  exceed  the  births,  and  in  Boston 
they  are  nearly  as  two  to  one.  The  man  of  the  temperate 
zone  deteriorates  by  transfer  within  the  tropics.  Climates 
and  races  are  in  such  definite  mutual  adaptation,  that  it  is 
above  all  needful  to  have  the  right  man  in  the  right  place. 
The  United  States  territory  lies  wholly  in  the  north  tempe- 
rate or  truly  historic  zone,  and,  as  a  broad  natural  fact,  it  be- 
longs to  the  temperate  races.  The  Caucasian  race,  under 

white  population.  If  we  allow  for  white  immigration,  the  ratio  of  increase  in 
the  colored  population  will  exceed  that  of  the  whites.  The  total  number  of 
alien  passengers  arriving  in  the  United  States,  most  of  whom  were  emigrants, 
was,  from  1820-1830,  151,824;  1831-40,  599,125;  1841-50,  1,713,251; 
1851-60,  2,593,214;  1820-60,  5,062,414.  The  slave  population  was  697,897 
in  1790;  893,041  hi  1800 ;  1,191,364  in  1810  ;  1,538,038  in  1820  ;  2,009,043 
in  1830;  2,487,455  in  1840;  3,204,313  in  1850;  3,953,760  in  1860.  The 
ratios  of  increase  are  27.97;  33.40;  28.79;  30.61;  23.81;  28.82;  23.39; 
averaging  28.11.  The  free  colored  population  was  59,466  hi  1790;  108,395 
hi  1800;  186,446  hi  1810;  233,524  in  1820;  319,599  hi  1830;  386,303  in 
1840;  434,449  in  1850 ;  488,005  hi  1860;  and  the  ratios  of  increase  were 
82.28;  72.00;  25.23;  36.87;  20.87;  12.46;  12.33,  averaging  37.43,  or 
nearly  three  eighths.  The  white  population  was  3,172,464  hi  1790 ;  4,304,489 
in  1800;  5,862,004  hi  1810;  7,861,937  in  1820;  10,537,378  hi  1830; 
14, 195, 695  hi  1840;  19,553,114  hi  1850;  26,975,575  in  1860,  and  the  ratios  of 
increase  were  35.68;  36.18;  3411;  34.03;  34.72;  37.74;  37.97,  averaging 
35.78.  The  average  ratios  of  increase  in  seven  decades  are  then :  total  popu- 
lation, 34.60;  white,  35.78;  colored,  28.85;  free  colored,  37.43;  slave,  23.11. 
A  careful  examination  of  these  data  will  show  the  tendencies  of  our  popula- 
tion development. 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  49 

various  nationalities,  has  full  possession  of  Europe,  and  in  the 
westward  march  of  empire  has  colonized  our  country.  North 
America  directly  confronts  Europe,  and  naturally  derives  its 
colonization  thence.  Fostered  by  progress  in  civilization,  pop- 
ulation has  already  become  excessive  in  parts  of  Europe,  and 
seeks  its  outlet  in  America.  In  the  grand  order  of  historic 
progress.  North  America  belongs  to  the  Caucasian  race,  the 
most  powerful  and  actively  colonizing  branch  of  the  human 
family.  Regarded  as  a  question  in  the  natural  history  of 
man,  there  can  be  no  denial  of  the  title  by  which  Europe  has 
claimed  and  will  claim  the  •  right  to  colonize  North  America. 
The  great  western  movement  along  parallels,  climate,  and  nat- 
ural adaptation,  so  ordain.  Europe  alone  sends  hither  volun- 
tary colonists,  if  we  except  the  Chinese  emigration  on  the  Pa- 
cific coast,  which  is  a  misdirection  of  a  tropical  race,  and 
should  not  be  encouraged.  Caucasian  civilization  has  an  over- 
mastering vitality  and  reality,  which  not  only  gives  it  supe- 
rior power,  but  a  higher  right  to  expand  and  assert  itself. 
The  Indian  title  has  rightly  been  swept  away  before  the  colo- 
nizing demands  of  the  highest  earthly  civilization,  and  no 
inferior  race  is  privileged  to  bar  its  progress  over  the  New 
World. 

Our  country  is  not  a  natural  home  for  the  negro,  and  he  is 
only  here  on  compulsion.  He  belongs  within  the  tropics, 
whence  he  came.  There  are  immense  unclaimed  tropical 
regions,  which  the  white  man  can  never  till.  Caucasians  will 
soon  want  all  the  temperate  lands  of  the  earth.  Thus  the 
African,  of  all  men  most  tropical,  can  only  be  permanently 
in  temperate  regions  by  perversion  and  misposition.  He 
would  never  of  his  own  accord  go  beyond  vertical  sunshine. 
He  never  has  attained,  and  by  his  own  act  never  would  attain, 
a  high  organizing  civilization,  without  which  he  can  have  no 
serious  need  of  colonization.  It  seems  an  immense  sin  against 

4 


50  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

nature  that  white  men,  stimulated  by  a  wicked  lust  of  gain, 
should  have  torn  the  sons  of  the  equator  from  their  tropic 
homes  and  transferred  them  to  a  land  which  Caucasians 
must,  in  the  progress  of  time,  claim  wholly  for  themselves. 
But  God  educes  good  from  human  transgression,  and  we 
gratefully  recognize  that  Divine  beneficence  which  even  con- 
verts the  forced  African  colonization  of  our  country  into  a 
blessing  for  the  African.  We  can  see  that  Africa,  left  to  it- 
self, would  merely  continue  its  poor  barbaric  history,  without 
progress  or  colonization.  By  the  slave  system  in  this  country, 
a  large  number  of  this  tropical  race  have  reached  higher 
civilization  than  they  otherwise  could  have  done.  They  have 
learned  so  to  live  that  their  increase  equals  or  exceeds  that  of 
our  own  race,  under  the  most  favoring  conditions.  The 
superior  sagacity  of  white  men,  stimulated  by  the  base  profits 
of  slave-breeding  and  slave-labor,  has  not  only  made  the 
negroes  fearfully  prolific,  but  has  so  ordered  their  circum- 
stances of  daily  life  as  greatly  to  promote  their  health  and 
longevity :  a  result  due  in  large  part  also  to  the  praiseworthy 
humanity  of  their  masters.  The  slave  population,  particularly 
in  the  cotton  states,  thus  shows  a  truly  threatening  rate  of 
increase,  which  well  deserved  serious  attention  from  those 
whose  domestic  future  was  wholly  involved  in  this  portentous 
cloud,  and  whose  children  were  in  danger  of  drowning  in  an 
African  black  sea.  If  white  men  are  to  hold  the  cotton  states, 
negro  fecundity  must  be  counteracted,  or  the  negro  race  must 
be  deported. 

The  main  question  is,  shall  these  states  be  hopelessly 
Africanized,  or  shall  they  be  reclaimed  for  the  sole  use  of  the 
white  man  ?  If  we  look  ahead  even  a  single  century,  we  can- 
not fail  to  see  that  every  acre  of  our  domain,  on  which  white 
men  can  live,  will  inevitably  be  required  by  our  own  race. 
It  would  be  in  thorough  contravention  of  the  natural  order  of 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  51 

human  progress  to  give  up  half  our  country  in  perpetuity  tc 
a  tropical  race,  so  inferior  in  capacity  and  culture  as  to  in- 
spire no  hope  of  their  attaining  a  high  civilization.  That 
these  negroes  are  held  in  slavery  to  white  masters  does  not 
alter  the  cardinal  fact,  that  a  country  perfectly  adapted  to 
occupancy  by  a  pure  white  race  is  being  perverted,  contrary 
to  nature,  for  negro  habitation.  We  can  never,  under  any 
shallow  pretext  of  occupation  by  a  few  white  masters,  assent 
to  the  virtual  annexation,  forever,  of  half  our  domain  to 
Africa.  We  have  but  to  look  at  the  relative  increase  of 
blacks  and  whites  in  the  slave  states,  to  recognize  the  alarm- 
ing fact  of  utter  Africanization  looming  in  the  near  future. 
How  lamentable  is  their  fallacy,  who,  because  the  African  is 
inferior  to  our  race,  would,  under  the  figment  of  slavery,  sur- 
render to  him  forever  more  than  half  our  territory !  When 
there  shall  be  ten,  twenty,  or  a  hundred  blacks  to  one  white, 
even  though  the  relation  of  master  and  slave  remain  unaltered, 
can  it  be  said  that  those  states  belong  to  white  men  ?  Admit 
that  all  the  profits  of  all  the  labor  go  into  the  pockets  of  a 
few  white  men  ;  does  this  even  mitigate  the  great  foundation 
fact  of  forfeiture  from  white  to  black  tenure  ? 

Towering  far  above  the  social  problem  of  slavery  or  free- 
dom for  the  negro,  rises  this  momentous  question  of  races. 
It  is  happily  true  that  the  white  race  is  every  way  the  strong- 
est, and  that  strength  must  ultimately  conquer.  In  numbers, 
in  increase,  in  civilization,  in  adaptation,  the  white  race  has 
the  superiority  within  our  national  domain,  and  the  African 
must  inevitably  be  eliminated.  It  will  be  a  great  duty  of 
our  future  to  remove  the  negro  humanely  to  his  proper  trop- 
ical home.  The  white  race,  which  has  by  violence  forced 
Africa  into  the  temperate  zone,  must  transfer  the  negro  to  his 
natural  inter-tropical  American  home  so  kindly  as  to  make 
amends  for  past  wrongs. 


52  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

As  we  calmly  contemplate  this  problem  in  the  natural 
history  of  races,  the  impression  powerfully  grows  upon  us, 
that  our  great  misplacement  of  Africans  within  the  temperate 
zone,  on  lands  predestined  for  a  temperate  race,  has  been 
Divinely  permitted,  as  the  condition  of  a  progress  otherwise 
impracticable.  We  cannot  but  connect  our  negro  problem 
with  the  still  mysterious  future  of  the  Amazon  valley.  The 
greatest  and  most  fertile  river  basin  in  the  world  must  be 
designed  for  some  proportionate  use.  God  never  made  this 
magnificent  garden  of  tropical  luxuriance  without  some  pur- 
pose of  human  habitation.  Africa  stands  over  against  the 
mouth  of  the  great  river  of  the  equator,  as  if  destined,  in  the 
westward  march  of  colonization,  to  give  its  surplus  population 
to  this  vast  and  fruitful  realm,  which  nature  forever  con- 
secrates to  the  children  of  the  sun.  It  seems  to  us  that  the 
misposition  of  Africans  in  our  own  land,  may  have  been  per- 
mitted as  a  needed  step  in  the  transfer  of  a  cultivated  negro 
colonization  to  the  plains  of  the  Maranon.  These  plains  are 
closed  to  all  except  African  and  Southern  Asiatic  labor. 
The  inert  African  would  never  move  on  alone  to  this  imperial 
destiny.  Obviously  his  training  in  the  Southern  states  will 
make  him  vastly  better  fitted  to  work  out  a  worthy  future  for 
his  race  in  equatorial  South  America.  The  superior  intelli- 
gence of  the  white  man  being  thus  effectively  impressed  upon 
him,  he  can  go  to  the  Amazon  Valley  better  prepared  to 
achieve  enduring  progress.  The  true  solution  of  the  whole 
negro  problem  may,  perhaps,  be  found  in  a  destined  African 
empire  of  the  Amazon,  to  be  founded  by  our  deported  negroes, 
previously  so  far  civilized  by  their  enforced  and  abnormal 
contact  with  our  race,  that  they  can  wisely  govern  themselves 
in  some  congenial  form  of  tropical  organization.  There  is 
apparently  no  other  solution  for  our  race  problem,  than  that 
which  is  based  on  a  policy  of  graduated  but  energetic  deport- 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  58 

ation.  Amalgamation  is  abhorrent  and,  as  a  fixed  policy, 
utterly  impracticable  by  decent  methods.  The  perpetuation 
of  the  existing  order  of  castes,  or  a  resolution  into  free  white 
and  free  black  castes,  cannot  be  accepted  as  the  law  of  our 
future.  Nothing  less  than  the  gradual  elimination  of  the 
negro  element  by  deportation  from  all  our  lands  where  white 
men  can  live  and  labor,  will  meet  the  clearly  perceptible  ex- 
actions of  our  coming  development  and  growth. 

The  South  American  continent  is  strikingly  similar  in 
structure  to  our  own,  contrasting  chiefly  in  being  tropical  and 
sub-tropical,  while  ours  is  temperate  and  arctic.  A  like 
triangular  continental  plain,  buttressed  against  the  Andes, 
presents  similar  vast  surfaces  of  low  relief,  drained  by  the  La 
Plata  waters  as  the  analogue  of  the  Mississippi,  while  the 
Amazon  corresponds  to  the  Lakes  and  St.  Lawrence.  The 
Brazilian  coast  ranges  and  the  Appalachians,  the  Andes  and 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  narrow  Pacific  slopes,  the  broad 
North  and  pointed  South  extremities,  are  features  of  structural 
analogy.  Fortunately,  the  vast  plain  of  the  Amazon,  out-meas- 
uring one  and  a  half  Mississippi  Valleys,  is  liberally  watered 
by  a,  rain-fall  exceeding  even  that  of  our  Gulf  states,  while  the 
climate  is  greatly  mitigated  by  the  trade-winds.  The  abound- 
ing forests,  which  fringe  the  great  river  and  its  tributaries, 
proves  that  exhaustless  fertility  of  soil  awaits  development. 
The  negro,  naturally  proof  against  heat  and  miasms,  is  even 
better  fitted  than  the  Southern  Asiatic  to  battle  with  these 
primeval  groves.  Possibly  the  effete  civilization  of  C  hina  or 
Japan,  is  here  destined  to  flower  forth  in  some  new  and  vital 
manifestation,  but  the  African  seems  providentially  on  the 
colonizing  road  toward  the  equatorial  empire  of  the  future. 
Already  had  Brazil  three  millions  of  slaves,  and  half  a  mil- 
lion of  free  negroes,  out  of  a  population  estimated  at  five  mil- 
lions in  1848.  It  can  only  be  through  a  scientific  and  truly 


54  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

statesmanlike  grasp  of  the  vast  possibilities  for  the  future, 
now  dormant  in  the  West  Indies  and  South  America,  but 
especially  in  Brazil,  that  publicists  will  be  able  correctly  to 
solve  the  great  problem  concerning  the  proper  adjustment  of 
the  now  ill-understood  relations  of  habitation  and  intercourse 
between  the  tropical  and  temperate  races.  A  mere  fragment 
of  this  adjustment  is  now  intrusted  to  our  charge,  but  the 
right  treatment  of  our  negro  controversy  can  only  result  from 
a  clear  view  of  the  whole  earth  problem  of  races.  States- 
manship which  does  not  proceed  on  this  broad  and  truly 
scientific  basis,  can  only  result  in  disaster,  when  it  attempts 
to  direct  and  control  the  territorial  distribution  of  races.  This 
is  the  fatal  error  of  those  who  would  push  the  negro,  whether 
as  slave  or  freeman,  away  from  the  tropics  into  regions  con- 
secrated to  white  labor. 

[While  waiting  the  providential  restoration  of  the  American- 
ized Africans  to  their  appropriate  tropical  home,  it  is,  mean- 
time, a  matter  of  serious  regret,  and  of  permanent  detriment  to 
the  Caucasian  race,  that  negro  agriculture,  whether  as  slave  or 
free,  is  wasting  the  native  fertility  of  the  Southern  soil.  During 
the  vast  primeval  ages,  a  process  has  been  slowly  operating  by 
which  the  falling  leaves  have  borne  down,  from  the  air  into 
the  soil,  their  carbonized  and  nitrogenized,  products.  The 
accumulated  fertility  of  ages  has  thus  been  stored  in  anticipa- 
tion of  the  coming  agricultural  period.  The  thriftless  system 
of  exhausting  lands,  which  seems  inseparable  from  the  rude 
and  unintelligent  labor  of  the  negro,  whether  slave  or  free, 
and  the  successive  occupancy  of  new  plantations  as  old  ones 
are  worn  out,  can  only  end  in  the  ultimate,  general  impoverish- 
ment of  the  States  where  the  system  prevails.  A  nation's 
true  material  wealth  must  ever  consist  chiefly  in  the  fertile 
capacity  of  its  lands;  in  the  carbonaceous  and  nitrogenized 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  55 

ingredients  of  its  soil.  These  once  exhausted,  desolation  and 
poverty  must  prevail. 

The  worn-out  lands  of  Virginia,  and  the  desolate  circuit  of 
abandoned  plantations,  which  for  fifty  miles  environs  Havana, 
are  monumental  protests  against  such  frauds  on  the  soil. 
There  will,  moreover,  be  peculiar  difficulty  in  winning  back 
fertility  to  Southern  soils  by  the  'agricultural  skill  of  free 
white  labor.  The  lack  of  luxuriant  and  nutritious  grasses  in 
the  Southern  states,  is  not  only  a  source  of  present  priva- 
tions, but  it  takes  from  the  farmer  his  chief  means  of  making 
good  the  waste  of  the  planter.  Thus,  the  temporary  sway  of 
slavp  or  negro  labor,  threatens  to  make  an  irretrievable  desert 
of  the  lands,  from  which  it  is  now  recklessly  exhausting  that 
fertility,  which  the  forest  ages  have  been  storing  up.  When 
the  African  shall  reach  the  Valley  of  the  Amazon,  he  will 
find  a  soil,  practically  inexhaustible,  but  his  enforced  residence 
in  our  Southern  temperate  lands  seems  to  be  inwrought  with 
the  promise  of  a  retributive  calamity,  a  coming  curse  of  bar- 
renness, from  which  there  will  be  no  rescue,  save  in  the 
weary  toil  of  unborn  generations  of  free  white  laborers.  The 
urgent  motive  thus  supplied  to  work  out  without  needless 
delay,  the  providential  policy  of  friendly  deportation,  is  one 
whose  force  will  be  most  felt  by  the  most  humane  and  philo- 
sophical minds.]* 

Every  worthy  idea  of  human  nature  and  the  human  lot, 
whether  derived  from  historic,  social  or  moral  considerations, 
exalts  freedom  and  deprecates  slavery.  It  was  reserved  for 
our  generation  to  hear  the  gospel  of  slavery  zealously  pro- 
claimed, and,  like  a  new  Islamism,  propagated  by  the  sword. 
We  have  seen  eleven  states  formally  abjuring  the  dearly- 
bought  faiths  of  freedom,  and  extolling  slavery  as  a  blessing 
in  itself.  Holding  that  the  negro  belongs  to  an  inferior  race 

*  [  ]  January,  1863. 


56  UN  ION    FOUNDATIONS. 

they  would  yet  force  him  into  regions  congenial  for  white 
labor.  The  slave-holding  leaders  would  sustain  and  glorify 
their  peculiar  institution  as  the  Ephesians  did  Diana ;  while 
"the  poor  whites"  of  the  South,  fearing  that  negro  freedom 
would  involve  an  equality  fatal  to  their  own  shabby  gentility, 
and  utterly  ignorant  of  the  true  dignity  of  labor,  fight  in 
illogical  concert,  little  realizing  that  they  are  striving  to 
Africanize  their  own  states,  to  the  ultimate  exclusion  of  their 
own  offspring.  Whatever  be  the  immediate  issue  of  the  con- 
test now  pending,  its  future  progress  toward  the  triumph  of 
freedom,  and  Caucasianism  is  naturally  assured.  Freedom  is 
stronger  than  slavery,  the  Caucasian  is  stronger  than  the 
African,  and,  historically,  the  North  has  been  "the  hive  of 
nations,"  which  have  swarmed  in  conquering  progress  south- 
ward. Free,  white,  Northern  strength  must  ultimately  ex- 
clude slave,  black,  Southern  domination  from  the  area  now 
in  controversy,  either  by  equitable,  pacific  progress,  or  by 
warlike  violence.  Should  we  now  enact  any  weak  concessions 
to  Southern  pro-slavery  fanaticism,  our  posterity  will  disown 
our  attorneyship,  and  will  re-enact  that  law  of  Nature,  which 
gives  the  seceded  states  to  European,  and  the  Empire  of 
the  Amazon  to  African  emigration.  The  sacred  democracy 
which  founds  the  social  organism  on  man's  simple  humanity, 
which  recognizes  human  nature  as  Divine  in  origin,  charac- 
ter, and  destiny,  which  honors  labor  and  exalts  the  laborer, 
which  hopefully  strives  to  make  the  future  ever  better  than 
the  past  in  a  growing  progress,  which,  amid  all  discourage- 
ments, and  proofs  of  man's  imperfection,  ever  lovingly  holds 
fast  to  the  noblest  ideal  of  aspiring,  struggling,  enduring, 
triumphant  manhood ;  this  universal  and  unpartisan  de- 
mocracy, which  through  ages  of  travail  has  painfully  and  sol- 
emnly labored  into  life,  now  lives,  and  will  forever  live,  strong 
in  the  right,  and  upborne  in  all  conflicts  with  ancient  wrong 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  57 

and  privilege,  by  the  vital  energy  which  God  has  implanted  in 
man's  nature.  Our  fidelity  to  this  heritage  of  regulated  and 
organized  freedom,  will  guide  and  guard  our  national  progress, 
and,  as  years,  decades,  and  centuries  roll  on,  will  establish  our 
nationality  ever  more  firmly  on  UNION  FOUNDATIONS. 


POSTSCRIPT. 

The  progress  of  public  events  since  the  preceding  pages 
were  written,  has  been  conformed  to  the  principles  therein 
defined.  Human  passions  have  indeed,  during  the  entire 
progress  of  the  pending  controversy,  been  too  actively  en- 
gaged to  permit  the  free  and  full  working  of  those  great  nat- 
ural agencies  to  which  the  ultimate  issue  of  the  contest  is 
rightfully  committed.  It  is  human  passion  which  has  fired 
our  noble  temple  of  Union,  founded  in  an  heroic  age  and 
adorned  by  the  living  virtues  of  three  generations.  Nothing 
but  hot  anger  or  frenzied  delusion,  could  have  made  parricides 
of  men  who  are  our  kindred,  who  were  nurtured  under  the 
tutelage  of  the  Constitution,  who  shared  all  our  proud  historic 
memories,  and  who,  by  all  the  titles  of  common  lineage,  lan- 
guage, culture,  growth  and  hopes,  were  with  us  in  one  nation 
and  under  one  banner.  Vinegar  is  sugar  fermented :  the 
bitterest  feuds,  the  most  relentless  hates,  are  also  the  tenderest 
and  dearest  affections  transformed.  But  as  nature  produces 
no  vinegar  except  by  changing  sweet  to  sour,  so  human  hearts 
are  not  born  imbued  with  hate,  and  the  bad  access  of  vengeful 
feeling  which  marks  the  bitter  controversy  of  to-day,  must  die 
out  if  it  be  not  studiously  nurtured  in  the  rising  generations. 
The  unity  of  race  and  language,  which  is  an  unchangeable  fact, 
must  assert  itself  in  the  future  as  in  the  past.  The  negrc 


58  UNION    FOUNDATIONS. 

and  the  social  order  based  on  his  inferiority,  forming  as  they 
do,  the  sole  divellent  forces,  which  strive  to  rend  asunder  that 
•which  God  has  joined  together,  must  not  be  permitted  to 
breed  eternal  discord  in  our  land.  The  time  must  come  when 
reason  will  be  heard,  and  then  the  African,  who  is  the  fruitful, 
but  innocent  source  of  all  our  woes,  will  go  hence  where  he 
belongs.  With  him  will  go  all  those  mad  ambitions  of  oli- 
garchy which,  building  caste  on  color,  now  war  on  the  very 
citadel  of  democratic  freedom.  God  grant,  too,  that  with  the 
negro  may  depart  that  fanatical  benevolence,  so  malevolent  in 
its  manifestations,  whose  bitter  fruitage  we  taste  and  execrate. 
God  has  His  own  ways  of  working,  and  however  slow  these 
methods  may  seem,  it  is  not  wise  for  man  to  try  whipping  up. 
It  is  well  to  realize  that  the  Creator  of  the  world  and  of  man 
still  lives,  and  is  responsible  for  the  general  progress  of  events. 
"  Learn  to  labor  and  to  wait,"  is  a  mandate  of  Divine  order 
for  nations  as  for  men.  It  will  be  a  blessed  day  when  peace 
shall  crown  reason,  when  patient,  earnest  work  shall  soften 
hearts  now  hard  with  hate,  and  when  fraternal  Union  under 
the  Constitution,  shall  nurture  into  new  and  enduring  life,  a 
loyalty,  heart-felt  and  universal,  toward  that  great  nation  and 
national  work  which  Supreme  Wisdom  has  here  predestined. 

Ere  this  can  be  we  must  purge  away  a  great  national  sin. 
A  demoralized  political  system  which  converts  public  trusts 
into  partisan  spoils,  has  killed  true  statesmanship,  and  made 
the  growth  of  statesmen  nearly  impossible.  Hence  the  foun- 
dation elements,  the  eternal  principles,  have  not  received  that 
recognition  which  was  their  right. 

The  lack  of  leadership  which  is  now  felt  as  our  sorest 
national  affliction,  is  but  the  natural  retribution  on  our  people 
for  the  political  dereliction,  which  has  given  over  the  benefi- 
cent and  holy  functions  of  government  to  harpies,  while  the 
great  and  good  have  been  left  unsought  and  undeveloped  in 


UNION     FOUND-ATIONS.  59 

the  genial  shades  of  private  life.  To  ask  great  statesmen  or 
great  leaders  under  this  monstrous  system,  is  to  ask  effects 
without  causes.  Some  great  affliction  was  sure  to  result  from 
the  "  spoils"  system,  and  had  not  secession  grown  out  of  it, 
something  else  as  bad  was  in  duty  bound  to  punish  us.  There 
can  be  no  hope  for  us,  except  in  a  renewal  of  political  in- 
tegrity, which  will  enable  us  again  to  restore  the  government 
to  its  pristine  virtue.  A  counter-revolution  which  shall  rein- 
state the  public  offices  in  their  old  glory,  as  honorable  trusts, 
confided  to  the  most  honest  and  capable,  and  which  shall  end 
their  degradation  to  the  base  uses  of  party,  will  revive  all  our 
dear  old  hopes,  now  bowed  in  the  sorrow  of  disgrace.  No 
opulence  of  natural  bounty  can  give  true  prosperity  to  a 
people  so  demoralized  as  patiently  to  endure  systematic  offi- 
cial simony,  God  be  thanked  that  this  war  has  shown  us 
how  noble,  and  patient,  and  hopeful  our  people  are,  and  that 
this  execrable  perversion  of  official  tenures  is  thus  proven  to 
be  no  real  exponent  of  our  national  morality.  Self-govern- 
ment on  a  devil-worshiping  basis,  is  simply  hell's  unendura- 
ble horror;  but  a  nation  governing  itself  in  sincere  natural 
piety,  and  in  profound  regard  for  Heaven-born  right,  cannot 
fail  to  triumph  over  all  afflictions,  and  emerge  triumphant 
from  all  trials.  God  has  so  framed  human  and  material  nature 
as  to  ensure  the .  ultimate  exaltation  of  a  righteous  nation. 
Amid  the  sorrows  of  the  present,  it  is  consoling  to  recognize 
God's  government,  which  chastens  to  heal,  which  works  on  in 
solemn  silence  through  all  the  varying  phases  of  our  contest, 
and  which  will  uphold  American  unity,  if  our  own  unwor- 
thiness  shall  not  unfit  us  to  realize  His  thoughts  and  designs, 
as  embodied  in  the  physical  features  of  our  national  domain. 
The  preceding  discussion  legitimately  leads  us  to  the  con- 
clusion that  one  of  three  events  must  close  the  contest  now 
joined : 


60  UNION     FOUNDATIONS. 

1st.  The  restoration  of  the  Constitutional  Union,  as  a  re- 
sult of  the  war  in  progress. 

2d.  Temporary  disunion,  until  the  Confederacy,  based  on 
slavery  as  its  chief  corner-stone,  shall  recognize  its  impend- 
ing doom  in  the  overwhelming  growth  of  free  white  labor,  and 
shall  seek  the  restoration  of  the  Union  by  friendly  means, 
and  on  a  truly  democratic  basis. 

3d.  Temporary  disunion,  until  the  blinded  and  defiant  Con- 
federacy, by  holding  the  boundary  line  drawn  tight  against 
free  white  labor,  and  the  democratic  spirit  of  progress,  shall 
again  evoke  the  desolating  scourge  of  war,  and  thus  meet  its 
final  fate. 

In  each  of  these  contingencies,  the  perpetuation  of  the 
Union  should  only  be  regarded  as  a  question  of  time  and 
growth.  Any  failure  now  to  effect  its  restoration  will  simply 
remit  the  completion  of  the  contest  to  a  future  generation. 
The  exasperations  and  arrogances  hitherto  so  conspicuously 
displayed  by  the  Southern  leaders,  afford  but  slender  ground 
for  hope  that  the  second  solution  would  result  from  a  present 
relinquishment  of  our  warlike  strife,  and  the  evolution  of 
some  unnatural  boundary.  Our  main  question  of  to-day 
seems  to  be  between  the  completion  of  the  Union  contest  now 
and  its  resumption  from  the  beginning  in  a  still  greater  future 
war,  which  can  hardly  be  postponed  through  fifty  years. 
When  we  consider  the  woes  unutterable  which  our  failure 
would  entail  on  our  posterity,  the  sad  obstruction  to  all  pro- 
gress in  good  culture  and  humane  development,  the  bitter 
anguish  of  hostile  feeling  thus  made  enduring,  the  bereave- 
ments and  heart-aches  of  to-day,  renewed  on  a  scale  greatly 
enlarged ;  when,  with  serious  and  sad  hearts,  we  confront  the 
future,  which  must  thus  be  born  from  our  actions  in  this 
crucial  year,  we  can  only  say,  God  help  us  bravely  to  do 
what  is  right  and  wise  .' 


UNION    FOUNDATIONS.  61 

It  is  ever  the  heroic  endurance  of  the  last  weeks  of  war  which 
shapes  the  conditions  of  peace.  It  is  our  duty  to  work  out 
now,  if  possible,  a  peace  which  shall  endure.  Such  good 
fruit  can  only  grow  from  the  rich  soil  of  old  fraternity  and 
of  new  purposes  of  right,  justice,  moderation,  and  good  will. 
Restored  Union  means  restored  citizenship  and  renewed 
brotherhood.  Our  armed  assertion  of  this  great  Nation's 
Divinely  ordered  unity,  must  keep  companionship  with  a 
humane  spirit  of  overmastering  fraternity.  There  are  other 
weapons  than  firearms  with  which  to  reclaim  the  truant  and 
erring.  The  forgiving  heart,  the  home  welcome,  the  tender 
oblivion  of  follies  and  wrongs,  the  kindly  nurture  of  returning 
affection  and  the  generous  justice  in  which  magnanimous 
natures  delight ;  these  must  do  a  work  which  is  beyond  the 
chemistry  of  gunpowder,  ere  a  living  and  vital  Union  can 
again  send  its  glad  pulses  through  the  healthful  body  of  our 
renewed  nation.  This  we  owe,  not  to  soothe  Confederate  pride, 
but  as  a  natural  fruit  of  our  own  earnest  loyalty  to  the  great 
obligations  of  American  Nationality. 

Whatever  may  be  the  destined  "  issue  out  of  all  our  afflic- 
tions," the  importance  of  rescuing  our  government  from  its 
perversions  and  reinvesting  it  with  the  majesty  of  pure  pur- 
pose, exalted  ideas,  high  capacity,  secured  stability,  and  faithful 
execution,  remains  paramount. 

NEW  HAVEN,  Coys., 

Jauuary  20,  1863. 


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